arts & culture

Elizabeth Kolbert on Hope, Despair, and Everything In Between

BenTestani — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 23:34:48 +0000

Elizabeth Kolbert on Hope, Despair, and Everything In Between

04/05/2024

Even before Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change to the mainstream, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert was on the beat. Kolbert says, “When I first started out, it was possible to find a lot of field scientists who would say to you: well, I'm not really seeing climate change. Now if you go back and talk to some of these same people, there's absolutely no doubt of what's going on.”

The culmination of Elizabeth Kolbert’s early reporting was the 2006 book “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” which sounded the alarm on the causes and effects of global warming. Now nearly 20 years later, she is still bringing climate stories to the public with her most recent book “H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z.” Kolbert’s writing can often feel like a harsh dose of reality. Kolbert says that is because, “I subscribe to a pretty old fashioned view of journalism, which is that the journalist's job is really to report on what's going on. His or her job is not to tell you how to feel about it.”

One theory of how to create change is called the “information deficit model.” If we just give people the facts, they will do what’s needed to address a problem. In the case of climate change, many would say that the facts have been known for a long time and that the world doesn't need more information. But Kolbert says, “There're so many forces muddying the message these days, it's not entirely clear to me that we have adequately tested the information deficit model because there's still a lot of information deficit.”

Despite the title “H is for Hope,” Kolbert’s most recent book is not dedicated to finding hope. As Kolbert says, “We are heading into, and I say this without fear of contradiction, a time of climate instability. And it's not at all clear what the limits on that are.”

She also says of the book, “If you follow even a really great, climate change story to its end, you've only told one strand of this almost infinitely stranded story. And so I wanted to try to bring more of those strands together.”

“H is for Hope” takes a different approach than Kolbert’s earlier work. The chapters correspond with a letter, such as E is for Electrification or the titular H is for Hope, and are told in bite size vignettes. One of the most arresting chapters is D is for Despair, which contains only two lines: “Despair is unproductive. It is also a sin.” Kolbert says, “ the point of that entry was to acknowledge that as a legitimate and perhaps inevitable point that you reach, but to get beyond that.”

The climate crisis evokes emotions that span the spectrum from hope and optimism to grief and despair. Former BBC reporter turned Zen Buddhist Nun, Sister True Dedication describes climate grief as, “A sign of love. A reminder to keep that love alive and to do whatever I can in how I spend my time and energy to be a part of the solution.”

Sister True Dedication also suggests that working in the climate space may require action without being attached to the outcome of your action. Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr., CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, echoes that sentiment: “You have to be okay knowing that you may not see the outcome, but you have to know that you're putting us on the right path.”

And sometimes, long term optimism is the motivating factor, as Climate Solutions Investor and Podcaster Molly Woods says, “I genuinely think we’re gonna figure it out. And I think the sooner we do it the better off people really truly could be.”

Elizabeth Kolbert headshot copyright: Elizabeth Kolbert

Guests

Elizabeth Kolbert

Journalist and author

Molly Wood

Climate Solutions Investor, Podcaster

Sister True Dedication

Zen Buddhist Nun; Editor

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr.

CEO, Hip Hop Caucus

H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z (penguinrandomhouse.com)

Field Notes from a Catastrophe (bloomsbury.com)

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet (parallax.org)

Hip Hop Caucus (hiphopcaucus.org)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: And this is Climate One.

As media hosts, we like to think that more information equals more action, but it turns out the way we behave is more complicated than that.

Ariana Brocious: Right, the way we convey information really matters, and who the storyteller is, and climate in particular, is important. It’s a difficult and complicated story to tell. It's multifaceted. It has a whole bunch of implications.

Greg Dalton: Right. It's so big, it's hard for us to see. It doesn't have a villain with a human face. That's why I so admire the work of Elizabeth Kolbert. I read her book Field Notes from a Catastrophe back in 2006. She goes to far flung places and witnesses the warning signs of climate change. In fact, that book is a huge part of what motivated me to create Climate One in the first place. Thanks. Thanks. It was such a compelling read for me.

Ariana Brocious: And 20 years later, she's still at it. She's been covering climate for decades. And I always look forward to reading her work in the New Yorker because I know that it's going to be a compelling, insightful, and well written story that takes me somewhere and also gives me a real dose of reality about our climate present. In her new book, H is for Hope, Climate Change from A to Z, Colbert tries a different approach to climate storytelling.

Greg Dalton: Right? It's written in bite sized vignettes. You can jump into this point or that point, this letter, that letter, though I will say it's not entirely hopeful.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, because she's a realist and a journalist and she's been covering climate for so long, she knows the score. That's why I was so excited to talk with her for this week's show. And I wanted to start the conversation by taking us back to her first trip to a weather station in Greenland in the early 2000s.

Elizabeth Kolbert: It's really, as close as you can get, I think, without leaving planet Earth to being on another planet. It's a very other, sort of otherworldly experience. If you're actually on the top of the ice sheet, it's just white snow in all directions, just this vast expanse of white. If you're sort of closer to the edge of the ice sheet, then it's a little bit more, nerve wracking, I suppose, because there are crevasses and all sorts of features to the ice then, and they're beautiful, they can be very beautiful, there can be these huge melt streams that are this fantastic color blue, and these moulins, which are these Just holes that develop in the ice where ice water just drops many, many thousands of feet. But being near one and I have been very near one, is a bit nerve wracking

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. And you've been back several times since that first trip. What changes have you observed? I mean, have you seen sort of with your own eyes the impacts of climate change?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I don't want to, you know, say that I've seen with my own eyes because I'm not a native Greenlander, but the Greenlanders whom you speak to will tell you there are immense changes that they have seen in the course of, you know, just the last couple of decades. I'll give you one example. There's a town called Olulisat, which is on Greenland's west coast, and it's at the outlet of this large ice stream. Where these huge icebergs break off, fantastically beautiful, and two things that people in that town have noticed. First off, that the icebergs, which are still quite huge, have gotten smaller over time. Their elevation has just dropped, so their size has, has dropped. And secondly, this bay, this huge bay, it's called Disco Bay, used to freeze over in the winter and people ran dog sleds over it, and now it doesn't freeze. And so that's a huge, huge change as you can imagine.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. Hmm. Well, you personally, like many of us have begun to witness some of these changes in your own neck of the woods. What have you seen, from your home in terms of changing impacts, changing seasons?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, anyone, you know, who's lived pretty much anywhere for a couple decades now, or even a couple of years, it sometimes seems can see big changes. What I've seen, you know, in the Berkshires, I live in Western Massachusetts in a area that where we have a lot of ski resorts. They're having, you know, tremendous trouble because the snow just, it's the season even of making snow. A lot of these snow resorts used to run on natural snow, which would be really impossible these days. And even the window for making snow has really, uh, crunched down to a very small window. Maple sugaring is, is a big, I don't want to say it's a big industry, but it's a lot of people make for sugar where I live. That window where you need these freezing nights and Warmer days. there's always a pretty small window for sugaring, but now it's just moved up so that it happens now. You used to have in, you know, April and now it's happening, can happen in the end of February this year. So, people have seen, really, really big changes in seasonality and that's just true everywhere.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, we've been hearing those stories on the, on the show for the last several years. People really beginning to kind of understand that this isn't happening in the future, it's happening right now. You're a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine and lately you've written about rising sea temperatures, unprecedented natural disasters like Hurricane Otis and the ecological consequences of extractive industries. And to be totally frank, a lot of your reporting is a harsh dose of reality.for where we are in this climate moment, and I'm curious how you hope your work lands with readers.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I guess I'd say I subscribe to a pretty. old fashioned view of journalism, which is that, the journalist's job is really to report on what's going on, and his or her job is not to tell you how to feel about it, or, or, or not to even think about that really, it's just to, to report the facts to the best of their ability, and so I, I guess that's what I'm reporting on, the facts to the best of my ability.

Ariana Brocious: Climate One co host Greg Dalton interviewed you on this show back in 2017, you said that solving this problem, climate disruption, climate change, is above your pay grade and that you hope to inspire people to think about it, but you can't take responsibility for what they do with the information. We had a recent episode where we discussed this idea of a information deficit model of climate communication and how it may be insufficient,since we've tried it for the last however many years and haven't seen a significant change in how people are necessarily responding to or perceiving of the problem. So at this point in your career, are you still convinced that that's the best path forward.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I think, there are all sorts of ways to communicate climate change, there should be, you know, advertising campaigns, there should be a lot of other things, going on. but I think as a journalist, I mean, once again, I, I just don't know. I don't have the ability, I don't have the resources, to be honest, to, you know, test drive messages to go out there and say, well, would this story work? Would that story work? You know, we're just not equipped to do that. Um, we're, you know, sort of barely equipped at this point to get the information out. And, you know, the information deficit model, once again, that's being challenged on all fronts and not to get into contemporary politics, but, there's so many forces muddying the message these days,for many times often highly motivated reasons. It's not entirely clear to me that we have adequately tested the information deficit model because there's still a lot of information deficit, but, even if I had, you know, very clear evidence that that was not the way to communicate this message to motivate action, I still wouldn't have means to come up with a different way to do journalism. And, you know, I still think there's a function for the truth, even if the truth is not what is going to get us from A to B.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, I echo that. There's definitely a role for the truth.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Yeah, that's something we could all, I hope, get behind, but I'm not sure.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, I want to get into your new book, H is for Hope. This is an abecedary, which is, you know, each letter stands for a word. It's a totally different format than your other climate books, which are longer journeys made by following scientists around. This one is a short collection of essays on different aspects of the climate crisis that connect to each other in a really nice, longer narrative. So I'm curious why you took this format that differs so much from some of your past work.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I was really trying to do a few things simultaneously, and one of which was to sort of re reanimate this story. I, I do think there's a way that people, you know, sort of, turn away from climate stories, they feel like they've read them before, what is there new to say? So sort of trying to break that open, break that story open. Catch people off guard a little bit, I guess. But the other other inspiration for it was that, you know, climate change is just such a huge story. It's not one story. If you follow even a really great, important climate change story to its end, you've only told one strand of this almost infinitely stranded story. And so I wanted to try to bring more of those strands together, and this seemed like a way to do that.

Ariana Brocious: And is part of the goal to be more accessible, maybe for readers who are daunted by a longer book?

Elizabeth Kolbert: absolutely. I mean, I hope that you could read this book, which is very beautifully illustrated by Wesley Alsbrook, and come away, once again, in a pretty short sitting, uh, with a pretty good sense of the whole landscape. which I think is, is, is, um, hard to acquire these days without reading several books on this topic. I think, I like to think you could get a pretty good, you know, sort of quick background on climate change.

Ariana Brocious: I think that's true. There's a lot, and there's a lot of contemporary reporting in here too. So I want to chat about a couple of these vignettes in a minute. Electrify Everything, this is the letter E, details the plummeting costs and massive expansion of renewable energy and describes a not so distant future where the U.S. runs on carbon free electricity. With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, electrifying our grid and all of our homes and cars is becoming much more possible. Then, you have a later chapter, Q for Quagmire, which details the extensive problems and complexities with our current electric grid and permitting. So I'm curious. You mentioned this, kind of multi strand nature of climate, but how do you reconcile those two states of affairs?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, that really does get back to the basic issue here. And I think at one point in the book, you know, I say it's to say that enormous strides are being made and to say that almost nothing has been done. Both are true and, and that is another, you know, sort of message of the book. I think there's a tendency to want to tell one story that has a very clear, you know, either we're doomed or we're going to be saved. You know, stories tend to fall into one of those modes. And I think that the, you know, truth, the awkward truth, the uncomfortable truth is that, um, all of these truths are true at the same time.

Ariana Brocious: Right. So another pairing, if you'll allow me, of some vignettes is Leapfrogging. So this covers the potential for parts of the world who have severe energy poverty to basically skip over fossil fuels entirely and move to a more resilient environment. ideally carbon free system of electricity. Then the chapter Shortfall describes the vast inequality baked into the climate crisis and the fact that the nations who've put most of the carbon in the atmosphere, the US, uh, Europe, Canada, uh, are not meeting their own carbon reduction targets and also very slow currently to commit money to help poor nations adapt. So how can poor countries leapfrog over fossil fuel dependence without the means to invest in those alternatives?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, that, that's sort of the great, you know, question of our time and this idea that, you know, there's so much inequality baked into the climate crisis, as you say, and, you know, you can't really say that people who have not contributed very much to the problem, but who very much want to develop and, you know, reach a better standard of living, which in, in our, the way that at least it's been conceived in the global north is very energy intensive. So I think India is a very good example of this. Now the most populous country in the world, relatively low. uh, contributor to historical emissions, but emissions growing very, very fast. So if you were sort of, you know, the world as a whole, and you said, what would be the sort of cheapest, um, best alternative for the world? You'd say, we should all invest in India so that India doesn't follow the same development path that the US and Europe and China followed, which were very fossil fuel intensive. It would be in everyone's interest to avoid those emissions Uh, and that would be the cheapest way to avoid those emissions. But getting the world, you know, to agree to that and invest in another country's development has turned out to be extremely difficult, bordering on impossible.

Ariana Brocious: Right, we've seen the creation of a loss and damage fund at one of the recent conference of parties, and there's been, I think, some, perhaps some money allocated to that, but it is slow, it's not happening, um, at the pace that's needed.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Yeah, no, it's a, the loss and damage fund has very little funding at this point, but if you go back, there were previous funds, you know, that arguably have never reached what they were supposed to reach. But I think the basic point. that this is very capital intensive. Investing in clean energy. I mean, the, the good news is once you've put the capital in, then the fuel quote unquote fuel, which is either, you know, the wind or the sun, let's say, is free, but the upfront costs are very high and that's particularly difficult for countries that don't have that kind of cash.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about hope, despair, and everything in between with journalist and author Elizabeth Kolbert.

Coming up, we look ahead to the next era in our climate future. And it’s clear that it’s unclear…

Elizabeth Kolbert: Now we are heading into, and I say this without fear of contradiction, a time of climate instability. And it's not at all clear what the limits on that are.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious Please help us get people talking more about climate by sharing this episode with a friend. And we’d love to know what you think of the show. Please give us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device – and it really helps people find the show. Thanks!

This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious.

Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book is called H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z. And it has a chapter for every letter of the alphabet: such as C is for Capitalism, J is for Jobs, T is for Temperatures. It’s a clever conceit… and also has a real narrative arc and flow.

But there’s one chapter that breaks the format – and when I encountered it, it sort of stopped me in my tracks – D is for despair. The chapter, if you want to call it that, only had two lines. It reads:

Despair is unproductive. It is also a sin.

I found those sentences really powerful… and so when I got the chance to speak with Kolbert, I asked her about them.

Elizabeth Kolbert: I think one of the advantages of this format was it allowed me to break the narrative in a way. And so, I actually wrote those first four letters in kind of a. a rush and got pretty quickly to D for despair. And then, that's sort of a moment in the narrative for a reset. But despair is a, you know, constant theme in climate conversations and climate coverage. And it's a pretty logical, you know, response to the actual facts and the numbers. but it doesn't get us anywhere. So the point of that entry was to acknowledge that, um, as a legitimate and, you know, perhaps inevitable point that you reach, but to get beyond that.

Ariana Brocious: But we do feel, and we all feel, and it can be really overwhelming to contemplate the scale of what needs to happen and, and, you know, how little we've actually accomplished. So how do you personally balance those competing things of kind of hope and despair?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I never, in any way, hold myself up as a model of, you know, what other people should be doing, and that's both, you know, psychically and, practically. And, you know, I wouldn't say that I have, a good answer, and the last, year, I think, has really challenged even those who would like to be hopeful. The, you know, the, just the data that are coming in are, are really scary. They're very scary. There's just no other way to put it. so I, you know, I, I, like all people, I guess I live on many levels and in a, in a very long term and You know, 30, 000 foot level, I feel very worried, very worried for my kids, very worried for the world. And on a day to day level, like everyone else, I, go about my business and, and, and live the life of right now. And

Ariana Brocious: I think that's something extremely relatable.

Elizabeth Kolbert: That's the problem, to be honest, that we're all doing that, because what we really need is to be, you know, just doing nothing but sort of focusing on, uh, what we need to be doing. You know, doing the actions and it's very hard to get the world's attention long enough, you know, there's always another crisis that's intervening.

Ariana Brocious: Well, and there's the simple fact we all have these priorities. Those of us who are in the more comfortable parts of the world are accustomed to that level of comfort. And, the idea of changing it, you know, there's, there's this, I think often false assumption that addressing climate means sacrificing, means having to give up things,instead of maybe just tweaking them to a different way, which is the case, in many circumstances. And so, yeah, it's a pretty complex area. We've talked a lot about it on Climate One. And I think, you as someone who's covered it for so long, I'm curious, you know, this has been at least two decades you've spent covering climate change. And you recently wrote an article in the New Yorker about last year's Canadian wildfires. And you wrote the unusual soon became the unheard of. So how do you grapple with this sort of unprecedented and even the term unprecedented this new era that we're finding ourselves in when covering climate?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I think that is the really, you know, terrifying aspect of it. And I, I don't think it's, you know, widely appreciated enough, although maybe as more and more of these unprecedented disasters strike, more and more people are really coming, you know, up close and personal with the unprecedented, we now know we can look at the climate of the last really 10,000 years in great detail, and we know that this moment that we're in, In which all of what we would call, you know, civilization, has existed as a moment of unusual climate stability in the whole, you know, climate record and the climate record of the last several hundred thousand years. And now we are heading into, and I say this without fear of contradiction, a time of climate instability. And it's not at all clear what the limits on that are. We just are in when you jack up the CO2 in the atmosphere, the way we have, which really has, you know, possibly never happened before in the history of the world that, that so much CO2 has been released so quickly. You don't know exactly what the impacts are going to be, and they could be sort of off the charts in ways that we can't even anticipate, scientists can't even, you know, exactly anticipate. There was a famous saying from Wally Broecker, who was a very important climate scientist, you know, climate is an angry beast and we are poking it with a stick. We don't know Uh, the honest truth, I think, would be we don't know exactly what the climate system has in store for us. We can be pretty sure it has some pretty bad stuff in store for us, but it could be even worse than many of the modeling studies suggest. And I think climate scientists, particularly in the course of this past year, when we've seen record after record after record fall, are starting to think some pretty, you know, are we missing something in these models? Maybe? And, and that is a very, you know, it's just very scary. The unknown is very scary when you have 8 billion people on the planet who are sort of dependent on the climate as we know it.

Ariana Brocious: Right. And another theme of this latest book and, and a lot of your writing is this sort of tipping points, right? And that there's these kind of feedback loops where we may hit a certain point and others have written about this too. And then all of a sudden it's like we are, we've passed a certain, you know, level of change and entered into a wholly new arena. And that's really scary. I mean, we don't know yet, right? Exactly when that might happen or,

Elizabeth Kolbert: Yes, I think there's more and more attention on these ntipping points, these points at which feedbacks in the climate system, it doesn't matter what we do at that point, these internal feedback loops will take over. And when I, you know, 20 years ago was first covering climate change, uh, Richard Alley, a glaciologist from Penn State, gave me this analogy, you know, you, you are on a rowboat, you rock the boat, it goes back to the same state, you rock it again, it goes back to the same state, and you rock it enough, and you get to another state, which is upside down, which is also stable, that's another stable state. So that's the big question, a lot of these systems, that we once again depend on unknowingly have quite possibly two stable states and we could be pushing some of them into the new stable state which with which humanity just has no, certainly not in recorded history, has no experience with that and really probably has no experience as a species, you know, not actually a very old species even. So there's probably, you know, we're probably pushing the climate out. It has been since we as a species evolved.

Ariana Brocious: Right. So in this, two decades that you've been covering climate or sounding the alarm on climate. How has the response changed?

Elizabeth Kolbert: The good news if you, uh, is that I think there's just much, much, much more awareness of climate change. you know, first, uh, started out, it was, it was, it was possible to find a lot of scientists, field scientists who, who would say to you, well, I, I'm not really seeing climate change and I'm not convinced that these models are correct, you know? Now if you go back and talk to some of these same people, and I have gone back and talked to some of these same people, they're like, oh, yeah, you know, absolutely. I'm seeing it in the field. There's absolutely no doubt of what's going on. And I think. that's true of the general public as well. Once again, it's just very difficult to avoid the signs of climate change these days. You know, everyone and many, you know, sort of ordinary activities as we were discussing, you used to go skate on that pond, you used to sled down that hill. Those are just not happening anymore. So you don't have to be, you know, much more than, you know, my kids, you know, kids are, You know, they're 25 years old. They remember sledding in the backyard. That was, that was just a big wintertime activity. Very unusual that you can do that these days. So, um, I think, you know, you don't have to be a weatherman, you know, to know which way the wind is blowing.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. Very true. You won a Pulitzer Prize for your book, The Sixth Extinction, and the world has gone through several mass extinctions over its four and a half billion years. The fifth was that of the dinosaurs. And you say that humans are causing the world's sixth, and that as many as half the world's species could be headed for extinction by mid century. But you also write about how humans reached Australia 50,000 years ago and wiped out species like the wombat rhinoceros. So humans have been altering the world for a long time, right?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Yeah, I mean, I think the evidence is pretty compelling that the, what's called the megafauna extinction, which was this, sort of, you could call it a wave or you could call it multiple waves of extinction of very large animals. It was very selective against large, slow to reproduce animals that hit first Australia, then the Americas, then places like Madagascar, as humans moved, settled in new places. So I think there's very good evidence that, you know, already 50, 60,000 years ago humans were causing, uh, extinctions. I, I don't think that's, you know, I mean, it is still debated, but I don't think it's really debatable.

Ariana Brocious: Well, the pace and scale has changed, maybe.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we, those animals that humans wiped out for presumably predominantly through hunting, you know, that might've taken, When we look back 50,000 years, we don't get very good resolution. It perhaps took You know, thousands of years to drive the, you know, uh, the megafauna of Australia extinct. Nowadays we are watching many species go extinct in real time. I mean, I've spoken to, in the course of reporting the sixth extinction, I spoke to many scientists who had watched on their own watch, you know, they'd started out studying X or Y, and it had disappeared, you know, in the course of doing their dissertation research. So, yes, this, this speed has increased, the rate has increased, and the sheer number and multiple classes of organisms that are being affected has, you know, shot up.

Ariana Brocious: So In each of the previous mass extinctions, percent of all life forms on earth went extinct in a relatively short time. Do you think humans are going to make the cut of this next wave?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well that, that clearly remains to be seen. I mean, if you define a, a, you know, a major mass extinction and that is, as you said, the definition basically three quarters of the species on earth being wiped out. That's a, fortunately a high bar, uh, to reach we are, you know, nowhere near that at this point. But if you look at the forces that we have put into play, it kind of depends how long are we at this enterprise of transforming the world. And I think one of the important points to make, and it is another, You know, plexity or wrinkle, I suppose, on, um, you know, fighting climate change. Some of the very, you know, sort of solutions that are proposed or ameliorative measures that are proposed are very land intensive, for example. So, uh, you know, are you going to plant forests to soak up carbon? Are those going to be the kind of forests that the, you know, In need of wildlife need, are you going to put down many square miles of solar panels to generate clean energy? Is that going to displace a lot of the creatures that were living, you know, in those many square miles? So there are noeasy ways out at this point. I think that is unfortunately the case.

Ariana Brocious: Many years ago, I read a book called The World Without Us by Alan Wiseman, and it was this thought experiment of if humans just vanished one day, um, how long it would take nature essentially to kind of reclaim what we've, what we've done. And it was really interesting. And one particular anecdote that stands out was like the subway system, I think, in New York and how quickly it would flood and, you know, the things that we have to do to actually keep them functioning, pumping out the water and so forth. Obviously that's not an outcome any of us are looking for, but it is an interesting way to view things and I think can give us some perspective that though we fee really. powerful, and I think you, you comment on this in this latest book, this sort of hubris that we have as humans and our ability to control the world, that there is a limit, right? There's a limit to what we can do, um, without probably resulting in our own extinction.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I think that we have, you know, one of our immense talents or maybe, maybe our true immense talent is, you know, very creative and very resourceful as a species. And that's why, you know, that's how we got to this point. That's why there are 8 billion people on the planet. That's a lot of, uh, of human biomass just to support. And you know, whether that experiment is sort of an experiment, uh, can continue, um, is, you know, at this level is, is really, you know, an open question. We are running many years ago, um, you know, one of the Roger Revelle, one of the very first people to sort of, uh, understand the significance of climate change, uh, back in the late 50s, said, you know, we are running a vast experiment. Which could never have been run before and will not be run again, you know, we we only have one planet Earth and in multiple ways we keep finding this. I mean microplastics are a really good example. Well, we just did it. We just decided to make a lot of plastics and that seemed like a good idea at the time But maybe it wasn't and now they're There's no way to get rid of all that plastic that's on the planet. So we just keep doing this. We just keep running these experiments. Uh, let's see what happens. And when you think about it, you know, just on a kind of gut level, well, yeah, maybe it, you know, works the first time and the second time and the third time and the fourth time. But, you know, at one of those times it's probably going to have some pretty serious consequences. And we're certainly seeing that, you know, with our experiment of using fossil fuels.

Ariana Brocious: Mm hmm. So what do you most want readers and our listeners today to understand about where we're at in this moment in the climate emergency?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, you've sort of summed it up. I mean, we are in an emergency. You know, if I were just speaking, you know, one on one with our listeners, we are in an emergency. I do think it's important that people understand that because I think that it changes your reaction to you. Um, various measures that are proposed if you say, well, that's, you know, as Al Gore famously put it, that would be inconvenient. It would be inconvenient to do X or Y. You do have to measure that against the alternatives. What are the alternatives? You know, so we've often had this conversation, like, well, I don't want to do this. We don't want to do this. We don't want to do that. But, the alternative you have to, everyone has to realize is change is coming, change is coming at us in a big way, and we can try to manage that change or we can let, you know, it sort of manage us. So that is, um, the sort of big message. I think from the book's perspective, the message that I want to leave people with, I would say it's not really a message book, you know, it's a book about, looking at this problem, this issue from multiple different perspectives, the perspectives of Americans, the perspective of non Americans, and, you know, introducing a lot of the many complexities of the issues without, I hope, uh, leaving people feeling completely overwhelmed. I, I'd like to say there, there's, I hope, I hope, and part of the point of doing it as an illustrated book, too, was, you know, there's a, there's, I hope, a certain amount of fun and pleasure, uh, in reading the book, even though the subject matter is obviously very heavy.

Ariana Brocious: There is. And I think you do walk that, you know, you kind of weave back and forth between more of the heavy things and some of the lighter things. So one of the chapter that I think it's H for Hope that really I found interesting was the rust, iron rust batteries technology, which I hadn't even heard of and, um, fascinating possibilities there.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Yeah, and that company that I wrote about, so H is for Hope, there's, you know, a section about, you know, many great new technologies that are being, um, developed. And that company that I sort of did a mini profile of in that section, Form Energy, is building a plant, even as we speak, in West Virginia to manufacture these huge batteries that rely on this idea that rust runs in one direction, but you can run it back in the other direction with energy that you have a sort of excess energy, like if you have a wind farm, for example, some days you just have excess energy that you can't put on the grid.

You can run these batteries, you can, you can store a lot of energy in these massive iron air batteries. And then when you need that energy, you can basically let the stuff rust again and run that process and get the energy back out. So it's, it's quite fascinating and it's, you know, actually happening.

Ariana Brocious: When we talked before, you, uh, said quite plainly that you do get tired of covering climate. Who wouldn't? Right? How do you take care of yourself, um, given that this is, you know, you're living the job you do day in and day out?

Elizabeth Kolbert: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, there are at this point thousands and thousands of people who are working on climate change pretty much, you know, full time. So I, I'm not exceptional, you know, in any way. It is something that, you know, haunts your, your, your days and nights, how's that? Um, but, um, you know, I guess I'd say there's a lot of people on planet Earth right now who have, you know, very, very acute, are facing very acute crises and war and famine and um, you know, terrible, uh, emergencies. So I don't, you know, I don't think it is productive or justified, you know, for me to in any way, you know, feel sorry for myself because I'm thinking about climate change. That's, that's a sort of a, any, anyone could be haunted by climate change. And many, many, I think increasingly many people are. That's why we have this whole term, you know, climate anxiety. So, you know, just count me, uh, among the climate anxious.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and I also want to allow for the fact that it's okay. I mean, you can only live in your own experience, right, and it doesn't discount the suffering and experience of others that's happening now. And also, the reason that many of us are anxious is because we anticipate much more suffering. So there's real reason behind it.

Elizabeth Kolbert: No, absolutely. I, I, I'm not in any way, uh, discouraging people, uh, from feeling anxious. Believe me, I wish I'm honestly more. I know that anxiety, you know, has a bad name, as it were, but I do think anxiety is a big, is a big motivator. We should be, you know, we should be anxious and we should be motivated by that anxiety.

Ariana Brocious: Elizabeth Colbert is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of the new essay collection, H is for Hope, Climate Change from A to Z. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Elizabeth Kolbert: Oh, thanks for having me.

Greg Dalton: Hope… Anxiety… There are so many feelings a lot of us wrestle with when thinking about our changing climate… including Grief. And of course, grief can manifest in lots of different ways. Coming up, Buddhist Sister True Dedication explains how she experiences that feeling… and how she copes.

Sister True Dedication: My grief is also a mindfulness bell, a reminder, uh, to keep that love alive and to do whatever I can in how I spend my time and energy to be a part of, of the solution.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. Greg, you’ve mentioned you have a fraught relationship with the mere word hope. Explain that to me…

Greg Dalton: I do have a complicated relationship with hope. I think hope can be fake and dishonest. I think a lot of experts don’t want to say that they think it’s too late, even when they’re really worried. And so they paint a rosier public picture of where the world is heading than they truly believe. I think people can sense and smell that

Ariana Brocious: Sure, because by admitting that they think we're doomed, they’d be giving up, in a way. And even though they feel like the situation is really bleak, they’re not giving up. And we shouldn’t give up.

Greg Dalton: Ok. That’s fair. But then if they’re not being intentionally dishonest, they’re being maybe a bit delusional. I get that: They need to convince themselves that the window hasn't completely closed so they don't get depressed and can keep moving forward with their work.

Ariana Brocious: You’re saying “they” but this could equally apply to “us,” right? I’m hearing you say this as someone who’s focused on climate 24/7 for the last 17 years, and talked with many, many climate experts and scientists in that time. Where do you put yourself on the optimism-pessimism spectrum?

Greg Dalton: That depends on the day and what I’ve read recently, the last person I talked to. Some days I look at the exponential growth of clean energy, and I get really excited. Then I look at people starving and dying because of droughts and floods and fires, and I get really depressed. I think all of us vacillate along a spectrum. We are dynamic beings, not static statues. How about you, Ariana?

Ariana Brocious: I haven’t been covering climate as long as you, so in a way you could say I’m newer to the despair and grief that seems to come with it. Of course I feel depressed and freaked out on a regular basis. The science can be really scary. But also I consider myself hopeful or optimistic, partly cause that’s my natural personality and partly because I’ve got kids, so I’m already deeply committed to ensuring they have a liveable future.

Greg Dalton:Yeah that’s a real privilege. Rebecca Solnit would say that some people have privilege to give up and we’ll be okay and I don’t feel that at all… I’m pessimistic in the short term and optimistic in the long run. Imagine the world we’ll have once we put into place all the clean energy solutions we already have. The whole economy changes to a less polluting, less extractive system. Public health gets better, energy gets cheaper…. That’s a world I want to live in. Journalist and venture capitalist Molly Wood can see this positive future. She created the “How We Survive” podcast for Marketplace.

Molly Wood: I am weirdly hopeful. I really am. I think that the awareness is at a crescendo and there's a lot of fear and anxiety but it is driving a lot of real change. And people are so ingenious, you know, it's really easy to think that our kids will live in this sort of terrible future because of all of this happening, but there's almost equally a chance that they could live in like an energy utopia. There was a great Bloomberg piece of sort of a thought exercise in imagining what we could do with unlimited energy. And it's pretty remarkable to think what we could solve at that point. And I'm starting to see companies design solutions that are like purpose built for the cheapest electrons on the planet and even including the intermittency. So, it's fine if the sun is not shining all the time we built a manufacturing process that works with that and is phenomenally cheaper as a result. And I love the idea of just trying to change that mindset, because it’s in no way is it a barrier, right, it's just an enabler like the 4G transition is a perfect example of what can happen when you go from scarcity. So, we had a scarcity of mobile bandwidth on 3G and there was only so much stuff we could do. And then 4G came and an entire economy was built on top of it. Like apps that we would never think about being able to exist because there was just ubiquitous broadband access on their phones. Like we started to think about what we could do with energy in that way. There's nothing we can’t accomplish. Look, at some point extinction is a really powerful motivator. We might lose a lot of humans before we get to the point where we have to fix it. I do not want to sugarcoat that. This is not a good, this is not gonna be a good future. However, we are gonna figure it out. Every time we have faced extinction before we invented fire or the wheel or electricity or penicillin or agriculture and there were terrible unintended consequences as a result of all of those things but like we the species didn't die. I genuinely think we’re gonna figure it out. And I think the sooner we do it the better off people really truly could be.

Ariana Brocious: Molly Wood's views on this are really interesting, as is this idea that whether you feel optimistic or pessimistic can depend on the time frame that you're looking at. And I think the only caveat to that is that I don't want us to feel like we can be let off the hook for taking action today because we're projecting that things are going to be fine in 50 years or something.

Greg Dalton: Right. And that's my problem with techno optimism or, you know, hope like, Oh, it'll work out. I have hope, et cetera. Someone else will do it. No, we have agency. We have responsibility to do what we can. And that's where optimism comes in. Cause sometimes when I act, I feel like, Oh, I'm doing something. It makes me feel better.

Ariana Brocious: Right. Action can really make you feel better. What else helps? What else makes you feel better?

Greg Dalton: Taking a lot of deep breaths, mindfulness, slowing down, even when I feel urgency to act, which makes me think in this balance between hope and despair about how much energy and emotion we spend on attachment to the outcome of our actions. That can be a real delusion or I think energy suck. And that can be really draining.

Ariana Brocious: Okay, so you're saying it can be draining to be focused on controlling the outcome of your actions, but come on, we're all attached to the outcome of our efforts. If we aren't attached to that, how do we find motivation to do anything?

Greg Dalton: It is countercultural to think that, Oh, we're not, we're not in control or, you know, to let go of attachments to outcomes or goals. We're so goal driven as a society. Acting without attachment to the outcome is a real Buddhist ideal and it takes some thinking to get your head around that. The key, I think. It's not giving up. It's persistent effort without being attached to specific outcomes. The control is an illusion. And I know that sounds radical or challenging.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, it sounds hard. It sounds hard to actually do.

Greg Dalton: Right. And I spent some time kind of, you know, understanding this myself. Well, wait, you know, wait, we got to have these, these carbon goals, three point, you know, wait, we have 1. 5 degrees, et cetera. We can't let go of that. And sometimes letting go of something can help it come into being. I got some insight into how to do it from a book called Zen and the Art of Saving Life. the planet. It was written by the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and edited by Sister True Dedication. She's a fascinating former BBC journalist and now a Zen Buddhist nun in France. In 2021, I spoke with her about acting without attachment. I often encounter people in the climate conversation who are so scared and so worried about the Urgency that we must act quickly. I think people are so scared. They think that any action is good action and other people will say, no, we need to slow down and think about more intentional action. But that seems hard to do when literally the earth, our home is on fire.

Sister True Dedication: I think even as Buddhists we acknowledge the urgency of the situation. The question is how do we respond to that urgency and how can we get the strength we need, the insight we need to not panic. And I think what happens to a lot of us in the urgency is we're in a knee-jerk mode, in a reactive state in our own lives, and just we really have to remember that the activists, the scientists, the people who are working in the forefront of tackling the climate crisis, we’re all human beings. And that urgency--we can't live in that state of heightened arousal, you know, it can destroy our body and mind. So, we are also part of the earth and so we want to contribute in such a way that is sustainable and healthy for ourselves while we act urgently. And the power of zen and the power of mindfulness is that it roots us in the present moment so we can be alert to what is going on. We can be responsive. We can be the master of our mind and awareness in any given situation. So we can really have the present moment as the ground for our urgent action and that is action taken with clarity, with courage, with solidity, with freedom, and not with panic., I feel we all need a real practice to be able to not be afraid, not be afraid of our fear and not be afraid of our despair and our anxiety and to learn some really concrete practices to be able to acknowledge it, recognize it and embrace it on a daily basis every time it comes up. More deeply actually to lean into that fear and despair, and accept that it is very possible that we won't manage to turn this around. There’s a certain acceptance that can come with that and a certain peace and freedom. And it’s like, alright, well, we got nothing to lose because everything you know the odds may be stacked against us. And that can liberate us I think from the panic and the anxiety to have a kind of peace, of freedom. And then all the action can come from love. we’re not measuring the consequences of our action, we’re just human beings, part of all the species on this beautiful planet trying our best.

Ariana Brocious: That’s beautiful. And an attitude I aspire to. But I imagine it’s easier to hold onto that mindset while living in a Zen Buddhist monastery. What about the rest of us, living and working in the real world?

Greg Dalton: Thich Nhat Hahn was a pioneer in what he called engaged practice that is present in the real world outside monasteries. He wrote many books about applying Buddhist principles in simple and small ways in daily life in mainstream societies.

Sister True Dedication says that all of us can take caring action toward other beings whether we’re in the monastery or not. And she says it can help counter climate grief–an emotion many of us are encountering more frequently, in which we mourn the loss of natural beauty around us.

Sister True Dedication: I do experience climate grief, that wonderful word, solastalgia. I think I've been living here in Plum Village, we're in the southwest of France, the monastery founded by our teacher 40 years ago. And I've been coming here since I was 20, so almost 20 years. And, uh, there are fewer, fewer butterflies, there's not the diversity of spiders, they can't grow the same crops anymore, so they're shifting to drier crops like sorghum. The creeks that used to run with water don't run with water anymore because they have to use all the water for irrigation. The trees struggle from the droughts that we've had in the last 10 or 15 years. So, It's something that I am, I'm witness to just as many of us are, wherever we are, we witness to the changes in the climate where we are, to the changes in the biodiversity. I was struggling with this a couple of years ago. So I decided I needed to introduce some more elements in my day that were more proactive in terms of taking care of my environment. So my favorite oaks that I could see were struggling in the drought. Two years ago, I was able to harvest all the acorns that had started sprouting underneath these two mother oaks. I call them mother oaks. And so I have 42 oaks, uh, that I'm taking care of, which requires more attention than you'd ever imagine. But that is my, it's like a daily prayer to tend to them, to make sure they have shade and water and so on. It is a way of being with the world, which is myself becoming part of that nurturing. But I think it is very important that we can actively contribute to nurturing life in whatever ways we can and I bring my grief into those moments. And this really comes back to this not measuring unconditional loving action and not measuring. At the deeper personal level, for me, my wish is to metabolize my grief into, into action. So it's to say my grief, what's grief if not love persevering, right? This is a famous line I think that came out in this year. So our grief is a sign of love. And so for me, my grief is also a mindfulness bell, a reminder, uh, to keep that love alive and to do whatever I can, um, in how I spend my time and energy to be a part of, of the solution.

Ariana Brocious: And the oak saplings are such a wonderful example of “metabolizing grief into action,” as she says. And yet I still have a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of act and not be attached to outcomes. I mean, doesn’t she care if her 42 oak saplings survive?

Greg Dalton: I’m sure she does. And she’s able to pour her heart into caring while recognizing that all her caring may not succeed in the way she wants it to.

Ariana Brocious: But it’s still worth the effort.

Greg Dalton: Exactly. It’s not like do nothing, it doesn’t matter. Action without attachment. Someone else who really shares that value is the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. I talked to him recently and his attitudes about attachment to outcomes were remarkably similar to Sister True Dedication’s. Reverend Yearwood is the CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, which uses arts and culture to promote healthy communities and environmental justice.

Greg Dalton: You talked about your willingness to give your life to this cause, and I'm curious a lot of activists are attached to outcomes. We're really got to achieve this campaign, you know, reach this number, et cetera. You know, are you also similarly attached to outcomes?

Rev. Yearwood Jr.: I actually am kind of outcome independent a little bit, this is where our faith comes in at. I have to do the best that I can do. I have to do it with integrity. I have to do it with the spirit of righteousness. And to do it with love, and if I do it with those things, I have to believe that the outcome that we will get should happen. But I also know, In these battles that you sometimes don't see it, you're not always gifted to see what the outcome is or what it will be. And because of that, you have to be okay knowing that you may not see the outcome, but you have to know that you're putting us on the right path. And I think that we've seen that, right, with the Civil Rights Movement, and we've seen that with the Women's Rights Movement, and the Queer Rights Movement. We've seen it before, when people didn't see the outcome, they unfortunately never knew how it turned out. They never knew that one day they would be a Black president. They never knew that there would be marriage equality. They never knew that women, well... Would have rights and unfortunately rights, some of those rights are being taken away, but they, they never knew they would see that and never saw it. I have to be the same way. I think others have to be the same. We don't know, honestly, if we're truthful, if this world survives the climate crisis, But you have to believe, and you have to be prayerful, that you are putting this world and this cause on a pathway so that those human beings after us, they can come and say thank you. You will never hear the thank you. You will never hear them say that we now have clean air, clean water because of those folks who lived back in 2023 and 2024. We now in, you know, 2074 and 2075, we have clean air, clean water. We, you may not be around for that. But you have to believe that there will be humanity after us, and because there will be humanity after us, it is our job, it is our destiny, it is our goal to make their lives better.

Ariana Brocious: And that’s our show. Thanks for listening. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. Or consider joining us on Patreon and supporting the show that way.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is producer and production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Jenny Lawton is consulting producer. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

1:39 - Elizabeth Kolbert on her first trip to a weather station in Greenland in the early 2000s
6:25 - Elizabeth Kolbert on the efficacy of the information deficit model
8:16 - Elizabeth Kolbert on the format of her most recent book “H is for Hope”
11:48 - Elizabeth Kolbert on renewable energy around the world
15:39 - Elizabeth Kolbert on the “H is for Hope” chapter: D is for Despair
25:37 - Elizabeth Kolbert on the next wave of extinction
32:02 - Elizabeth Kolbert on self care as a climate journalist
37:33 - Molly Wood on optimism.
41:47 - Sister True Dedication on acting without attachment
49:01 - Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr on being outcome independent

Play

How Activism Can Win Bigger and Faster with Kumi Naidoo

BenTestani — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:58:16 +0000

How Activism Can Win Bigger and Faster with Kumi Naidoo

03/08/2024

Kumi Naidoo is a world renowned activist and climate leader. Before going on to lead Greenpeace International then Amnesty International, Naidoo was a 15 year old anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. Naidoo says, “Many of us in that generation of activists, We lived on the basis that we could be killed anytime.”

Naidoo organized school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa, which made him a target for the Security Police. The situation became so dangerous that Naidoo had to flee South Africa and live in exile in the UK. Upon his return, Naidoo played a pivotal role in the legalization of the African National Congress in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.

“The [South] African situation was pretty black and white, literally and figuratively. Climate and other struggles are actually a very different, more complex problem,” says Naidoo. The complexity can make it particularly difficult for climate activism to be effective. Climate advocates tend to appeal to the intellect, Naidoo says: “Facts, figures, policies, and proposals. Everything is aimed at the head, and we have ignored the heart.”

When we talk about change on a massive scale, the road to get there may require some compromises. Compromise can make solutions more durable and less affected by political winds. Naidoo is willing to forge alliances that include people from the oil and gas industry, especially the workers. “At the Paris Climate Negotiations in 2015, I shocked some journalists when I said the men and women who work in the fossil fuel industry are our brothers and sisters,” says Naidoo.

Kumi Naidoo points to another issue that is preventing more movement on climate solutions. He even describes it as a disease. Naidoo says, “It's a disease we can call affluenza. And affluenza is a pathological illness where humanity has come to believe that a good, meaningful, decent life comes from more, more, and ever more material acquisition.” Naidoo believes that people have become dependent on gadgets and status symbols. Naidoo says, “the struggle on climate change has to be a struggle to rethink consumption patterns.”

Even as the window to address climate is closing, Kumi Naidoo says “We still have a small window of opportunity. So long as that window is open, we need to keep our optimistic take on it.”

Of all the forms of protest and activism Naidoo has engaged in over the decades, he now places most faith in the power of arts and culture. This view is echoed by Hip Hop Artist and Educator Mystic.

“Art allows people to tune in,” she says. “I think sometimes when we're enjoying ourselves or engaging with art. some of our defenses come down.”

As the climate situation becomes more dire, some activists have chosen more confrontational tactics – like throwing soup on paintings or disrupting meetings. Sociology Professor Dana R. Fisher is author of the new book “Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. She says the goal of the radical flank that engages in those more confrontational tactics is “to push the activism to a more extreme place that mobilizes people to be more willing to participate in moderate types of activism.”

Climate chaos will affect everyone, and that gives activists the unique opportunity to speak to a broad audience. Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, President and CEO of Environmental Grantmakers Association, says “We are in a time when the youth agenda is no different than the black agenda, than the indigenous agenda, because at the end of the day, we need to be in a space where we can move the needle for change because there is no separation of success here.”

Guests

Kumi Naidoo

Human rights and environmental justice activist

Alex Ajose Nixon

Spoken Word Poet

Mystic

Hip Hop Artist and Educator

Dana R. Fisher

Director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity, School of International Service, American University

Tamara Toles O'Laughlin

North America Director, 350.org

Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker (goodreads.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. Growing up in South Africa, Kumi Naidoo became an activist at a young age. When he was just 15, he organized protests at his school against the apartheid regime.

Kumi Naidoo: Many of us in that generation of activists, we lived on the basis that we could be killed anytime.

Greg Dalton: He grew up to lead Greenpeace International and then Amnesty International. But he says that work was not always satisfying.

Kumi Naidoo: I cannot tell you how much time we have all spent in what young people now dismiss as handshake activism. You know, going in good faith and meeting with UN bodies, CEOs of big companies…it was a ritualistic exercise.

Greg Dalton: After decades of working for civil and climate justice, Kumi Naidoo has plenty to share about what works – and what doesn’t.

Kumi Naidoo: Facts, figures, policies, and proposals. Everything aimed at the head, and we have ignored the heart.

Greg Dalton: How Activism Can Win Bigger and Faster. Up next on Climate One.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One.

[music change]

Greg Dalton: Each week on the show, we talk with people who have made climate action their life’s work. They’re scientists, writers, community leaders, artists…

Ariana Brocious: We talk with famous people like Jane Fonda, Al Gore, the writer Rebecca Solnit...

Greg Dalton: And also emerging young activists like Vanessa Nakate and Nalleli Cobo.

Ariana Brocious: Many of the voices you hear on this show answered the call to climate action – very early in their lives – and have carried that with them through their life and their work.

Greg Dalton: Whenever I talk to activists, I want to know: how do they think change happens and what’s the most effective way to achieve it? What’s the best lever to pull: do you protest in the street? Infiltrate corporate boards? Or do you need access to people in power, presidents and prime ministers to influence them?

Ariana Brocious: Our guest today has kind of done it all: he’s protested in the streets AND secured high-level meetings in the halls of power.

[music change]

Kumi Naidoo became an activist pretty early in life…

Greg Dalton: He grew up in South Africa. When he was just 15, he organized a series of boycotts at his school and others – they were protesting the segregated educational system under apartheid. That work made him a target for the “security police.” And he had to flee the country and live in exile in the UK for several years.

Ariana Brocious: But that was just the start of his career in activism and social justice. He was arrested for scaling an oil rig ... while he was leading Greenpeace International. He went on to lead Amnesty International. Now he’s a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, where he’s focused on how activism can win bigger and faster.

Greg Dalton: He’s one of the few people I’ve met who seems equally at home at a protest and working the room at the World Economic Forum in Davos. To me his comfort with elites AND his ability to challenge those SAME elites makes him a really intriguing figure.

[music change]

Recently, I talked with Kumi Naidoo in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The event was just a couple days after the death of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist – and his passing was really fresh in our minds.

Kumi Naidoo: It brought back lots of memories of people that I had lost in prison and in exile, killed through depression during the struggle against apartheid. And mostly it reminded me about what his message of his life was communicating, like we have seen with many people across the world over history. And what he was saying In his life was the struggle for justice is a marathon and not a sprint. And that sometimes ordinary people are called upon to make extraordinary choices. He had a choice after they tried to poison him not to go back to Russia. He chose to go back. And if you look at our Class of politicians today across the world in this country included, they don't come anywhere near Navalny in terms of having any sense of integrity and any sense of being able to put their lives on the line and do that which is right. And of course, I understand your former president made a comparison with his court cases with that of Navalny. And I just want to say we should highly disassociate ourself with any comparison between Donald Trump and Alexei Navalny.

Greg Dalton: You grew up in apartheid South Africa, talk about personal price, were you willing to give your life to the anti apartheid cause? Was there a time when you thought you might give your life to anti apartheid?

Kumi Naidoo: All the time basically. We got involved, at the age of 15. And I like to tell the story. Because at the front of the march, our slogan was “we want equality.” But then the slogan got to the younger kids at the back of the march. They were chanting, we want a color TV. We want a color TV. Truth be said though, we wanted equality and a color TV almost equally. And both appeared equally unattainable. But many of us in that generation of activists, We lived on the basis that we could be killed anytime. Because we used to go to funerals every other weekend, right? And at those funerals, people get killed, and it was a cycle, right? And when I was fleeing South Africa into exile, my best friend Lenny, says to me, What's the biggest sacrifice we can make for the cause of justice? And I say to him, Giving our life. And then, he says that's the wrong answer. He says, it's not giving your life. But giving the rest of your life. And at 22, he was like way ahead. He was the only person amongst us who got the intersection between racial justice and environmental justice. In fact, I jokingly say at that time he probably was one of only 5,000 voluntary vegetarians on the entire African continent. So we shrugged and cried and we went in different directions. Two years later I heard that Lenny had been brutally murdered by the Apartheid regime with three other young women from my home city. There were so many bullets in his body his parents were not able to recognize him at the mortuary. And I had to think deeply about that distinction between giving your life versus giving the rest of your life. We have to shift our young people from any logic about you should die for your country. We need to shift people that you should live for your country. You should live with purpose, both for your country and the world.

Greg Dalton: Apartheid human faces, FW DeKlerk and there were villains and there was this system and there was, the police, climate can feel so abstract, especially compared to civil and human rights. And so how does addressing climate require different tactics and thinking than the regime of F. W. DeKlerk.

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah as I like to say, the African situation was pretty black and white, literally and figuratively, right? Climate and other struggles are actually a very different, more complex problem. Let's say when I was doing human rights work and you're dealing with the issue of torture. With torture, you can take a person who has survived torture and they might have scars on their bodies, and you can take a photograph and you can communicate that. Or if somebody is homeless, you can capture the reality. The reality to show exactly what climate change is not that easy and say for us in Africa Even though we have contributed least to the problem. We are paying the first and most brutal price, right? And for us the manifestation of climate impacts is not like typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes that you have here, things that is a massive media moment when it happens.

Greg Dalton: It's slow moving, it mores slowly.

Kumi Naidoo: Exactly, it's drought and desertification, which is one of the biggest impacts of climate change. Parts of our continent are becoming completely depopulated, but it's hard to make the connection to climate change is easily the other challenge we have with climate change is it's not in, yeah, in absolutely an immediate way every single day. It can be there. If you're following the news in different parts of the world, but if people live in a particular community, like we come from Durban, right? And two years ago on two days, we lost 500 people like that through a massive storm, like flooding, like we've never seen before hundreds of billions in, in, in rands of infrastructure.

Greg Dalton: Barely made the news here.

Kumi Naidoo: Of course. And right now, I don't even get surprised when lives are lost in the Global South, that the Global North just doesn't register it, because it's just become the norm. We fight against it, we want people in the Global North to understand that we our lives are no less, uh, cheaper than your lives are. I just would end this point by saying, when we say Global North and Global South, please understand what we are saying is that the overwhelming global majority in the global south and the minority in the global north. I understand, look at the numbers that we are talking about. So we have a deeply undemocratic world and that is probably one of the main reasons why we're not making progress on climate.

Greg Dalton: Let's talk about intersectionality as it relates to getting more people involved. You created a graphic that shows four quadrants,four paths for how people can get involved on climate justice. Tell us about the different pathways and people don't think they have power when it comes to climate because it's so big. I talk to a lot of powerful people who run the U. S. Navy, the state of California. They're like, I can't, I can't really put a dent in this. It’s hard.

Kumi Naidoo: This is the most important question for me, right? Because our starting point of activism, those of us who say we need to change things. We start with a mentality about how people are oppressed, repressed, excluded, marginalized, and so on. And what has happened over time unwittingly is we have actually come to think that people have much less agency than they actually, notwithstanding all those injustices that people have absorbed, that they have, right? And what is needed for us to remind ourselves about the power that people have, the different kinds of power that people have. So on harnessing our autonomy, for example, people have tremendous powers as citizens and voters, as enforcers of transparency and accountability as litigators, even in the red state of Wyoming recently young people were able to take a court case and actually win a court case showing that the federal government was betraying.

Greg Dalton: it was Montana, but I know you're British, so geography's not so good

Kumi Naidoo: it is it was Montana. I've made this mistake before. I've made this mistake before.

Greg Dalton: One of those big square states, yes. It's all right.

Kumi Naidoo: Sorry, I've made this mistake before. This is Montana. But I want to just say that the second area which is harnessing our creative participation, and this is where I consider climate activism has made its biggest error, right? And that is, we have tried to shift people into action by science, facts, figures, policies, and proposals. Everything aimed at the head, and we have ignored the heart. Now I hate to say this. But Steve Bannon and Donald Trump actually get it. They get that you move people, not by facts, figures, and so on. And I'm not saying we need to do what they are doing, where they actually falsify the facts and talk outright lies and create alternative realities. We can stick to the facts, but we can communicate the facts in, hopefully, less of a boring way than we currently do it. We have to learn to move people and so yeah, it's about harnessing our arts and culture and so on. And I'll quickly just say that harnessing our wealth is a critically important thing. We have more power in terms of wealth, even amongst poor people around the world or low income people. If we aggregate, and we've seen this happen. Where people have gone in Australia, for example, when the wanted to do the biggest coal mine in Australian history in 2015, a coalition emerged, they mobilized people, they went to the banks every Saturday over a period of time and said, you will not lend to the destruction of our children's future. And all four Australian banks said, no, we won't do it.

Greg Dalton: There's lots of ways that people can be involved and we hear a lot about a just transition from away from fossil fuels needs to include communities, lots of talk, deliberation, consultation with Indigenous people. That sounds slow. What's the tension between speed and inclusion wen it means getting off fossil fuels. Are those things intention, inclusion and speed?

Kumi Naidoo: We need to be able to do both. We need to include people and we need to move much faster than we're moving right now If you think we're going to move faster by excluding people and so on Then we are making the wrong calculation because those people that have been excluded are going to hold you back

Greg Dalton: I hear Al Gore say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, so you know, this is an African wisdom which i'll go always uses and I welcome the use of it.

Greg Dalton: Often without attribution, he does. Yeah.

Kumi Naidoo: But let me just say that the scale of the changes that we need to make to address the climate crisis requires a level of participation by ordinary human beings on this planet on a scale that we have never seen. And that doesn't mean we cannot move fast in doing that, right? Let's take the just transition which you should speak about. So if we are wanting to get the trade union movement to be a key partner In the fight on climate justice, which has been a big challenge.

Greg Dalton: Cuz labor unions love building fossil fuel pipelines and love –

Kumi Naidoo: But if I look at where unions were 20 years ago and where unions are today. Another story altogether and we have to acknowledge it. But and I think the time is right now to.

Greg Dalton: Although a lot of clean energy jobs are not unionized, there's still

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, of course, there is a tension. Let me just tell you a thing that might shock you. The most powerful one liner on climate doesn't come from an environmentalist, comes from a trade union leader, right? At the Rio Plus 20 conference, 20 years after the first climate conference, I find myself sitting with 14 civil society leaders, including the head of the global trade union movement, Sharon Barrows, in Rio, waiting to go see Ban Ki Moon and Sharon is almost as naughty as I am so she, so we were looking at each other's notes, and she suggested, Hey, why don't you use my notes in the meeting with Ban Ki Moon, and I'll use your notes. And so there she was. As a trade unionist, speaking so strongly on climate change, you can see Ban Ki Moon is confused. He's like, why is this trade union lady banging on about climate? And then she says, Secretary General, you might wonder why me as a trade unionist, who has to focus on decent work, decent working conditions, and decent compensation, I am so concerned about the climate. And she said, because as a human being, as a trade unionist, and as a mother, I realize there are no jobs on a dead planet. There are no jobs on a dead planet. And I can tell you the whole room froze in a way that nothing that could have come out of my mouth could have actually done that.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a conversation with the internationally renowned activist Kumi Naidoo.

Coming up, Naidoo takes on the fossil fuel industry. And his approach… well, it was unconventional:

Kumi Naidoo: I shocked some journalists when I said, the men and women who work in the fossil fuel industry are our brothers and sisters.

Greg Dalton: Leading with empathy. That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: Please help us get more people talking about climate by sending this episode to a friend. Or take a moment to give this podcast a rating or review – we’d love to hear what you think, and it helps others find the show. Thanks!

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton

When we talk about change on a massive scale, the road to get there is inevitably going to involve some compromise. And I think that’s a good thing. For durable progress, we need more people saying yes, even if that means purity or perfection is not achieved.

When I talked with lifelong activist Kumi Naidoo, he explained that there’s another issue that is preventing the action we need on climate. He even describes it as a kind of disease…

Kumi Naidoo: The biggest problem in the world with disease we face is not COVID. Or any other disease, but it's a disease we can call affluenza. And affluenza is a pathological illness where humanity has come to believe that a good, meaningful, decent life comes from more, more, and ever more material acquisition. And the struggle on climate change has to be a struggle to rethink consumption patterns, right? We have become children in many parts of the world about how we've become dependent on all sorts of gadgets and symbols of achievement. When in fact, we should be incredibly embarrassed that so few have that when so many cannot, you know, even survive.

Greg Dalton: So how do you navigate yourself, your own personal complicity, you know, your own consumption, whether it's flying, et cetera. It's easy to say, like, Oh, I'm not a bad person. My little bit doesn't matter. And other people can obsess and get so hung up on tiny, tiny little things that have become paralyzed with their micro actions and they are weighed down and can't see the bigger picture.

Kumi Naidoo: So, When I was at Greenpeace, I used to get this question a lot, because evidently when I was at Greenpeace, I was one of the people that traveled most in the world, I was told. But if you take the entire budget of Greenpeace at the time, about, at that stage, about 300 million euro in global budget, right? And I'm up against 20 fossil fuel company leaders, right, right, who are flying in private jets to go to climate negotiations and so on, right. And, when we look at just Shell, take one company, their marketing budget, like our entire 400 million is not even 10 percent of the marketing budget, right? I was never going to be apologetic about using the only means of transportation sometimes that we had available to us to go and take on those CEOs of those fossil fuel companies. And so it's not, I mean, it's not like. I'm traveling, you know, lavish holidays on planes and so on. And, and, you know, I made choices and I, you know, you can check it out. I live, I live in a very poor community in South Africa where our government has destroyed our society. So I'm, I'm trying to live a low consumption lifestyle, use whatever money I earn for public purposes, and, but I'm not going to apologize for traveling to a space to fight a struggle that needs to be fought,

Greg Dalton: I understand CEOs, but how about rank and file workers? Because a lot of people here work for fossil fuel companies and hear environmentalists talk like, Oh, you hate me. You think I'm bad. I'm a bad person because I, I, you know, am working to provide energy that everybody uses every day. So can you parse the villainization of fossil fuel interests? Can you have some empathy for rank and file workers who are in West Virginia or Nigeria?

Kumi Naidoo: yeah So at the Paris Climate Negotiations in 2015, I shocked some journalists when I said, the men and women who work in the fossil fuel industry are our brothers and sisters. Right? They are not our enemy.

Greg Dalton: That's not an applause line at an environmental rally in Paris.

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, no, no. People got very, what is he going to say now? But thankfully I say enough crazy things that people are used to it. So, so, I said, many of the men and women at the rank and file level who work We're told by the governments, by society, you are providing a critical service to make sure that this country runs. They want to provide energy. They don't particularly want to provide dirty energy, but they have not been given the option. And the beauty of if we get serious about a transition from an economy that's driven by dirty energy to an economy that's driven by clean energy is that if we get serious about it, the job creation possibilities, the pollution levels, a whole lot of, you know, things go down. I remember there was a cartoon at the Copenhagen 2009 climate negotiations where, you know, you had a bunch of people biting their fingernails and one person says to the other, What if we do all of this? And climate change was a hoax, right? And then, and then people said, well, that's air quality, more protected biodiversity and so on.

Greg Dalton: How do you, say, answer the question, is it too late?

Kumi Naidoo: Hey, shh! This one so, so, this is my line, but I must confess to you, not every morning when I wake up, I feel I can say it as confidently as I'm going to say it to you now. The reality is, we still have a small window of opportunity. So long as that window is open, we need to keep our optimistic take on it, right? But that window of opportunity is closing and fast closing. But, we have to believe that humanity can rise to the challenge and broaden that window and turn things around.

Greg Dalton: And good things are happening.

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, and as you and others point out, it's happening too slow. So, yes, the main sort of rallying call that I'm promoting everywhere, and all the movements that I'm part of, where I say that in the moment of history that we find ourselves in, pessimism is a luxury. we simply cannot afford. And the pessimism that justifiably arises from our analysis, our observation, and our lived experience can, must, and should be overcome by the optimism of our thought, our action, and our courage. However, I said this once to some young people, and some of them confronted me after and said, Kumi, you know, that's all airy fairy bull* as far as we're concerned. But here's the science. We're almost getting to 1.5. And why don't you just say, we left it too late, and now we should just be thinking about how we survive. And then I say, well, that's not going to help us find the solutions necessarily. But let me just say, let me agree with you. That it is too late, right? and I, and I say to them, honestly, you know, there are times that I genuinely feel that.

Greg Dalton: For some people it's, it's

Kumi Naidoo: oh, of course for the, the, the, the 500 people that died in Durban two years ago in my own city, of course it was too late for them,

Greg Dalton: For a lot of people it is, yeah.

Kumi Naidoo: So I say. Assuming you're right, and we're all going down, I refuse to accept that those that brought us to this point will not be named, shamed, and held accountable for what they did to us, for those that didn't listen, for those like the Chevron, Texaco, and all these other companies, when their scientists were telling them about the dangers of fossil fuels before the IPCC and the United Nations were saying, and they were building their rigs higher in the oceans and so on because in they were taking into account, but publicly they were spending hundreds of millions saying, Oh, this is just a joke, right? And so when I say, I said, if we're going down, let's not go down without a fight, right? Let those that brought us to this point be held accountable. And if human life ever were to emerge again from this planet, then hopefully we can learn from that. And young people like the idea because it's hard for young people to find optimism in this current moment, right?

Greg Dalton: Young people are getting more confrontational, throwing soup on paintings, disrupting democratic politicians. What do you think when you see people gluing themselves to streets, disrupting, people who had formerly considered allies, moderate Democrats, making us all feel uncomfortable? Is that effective?

Kumi Naidoo: Before I comment on specific acts of civil disobedience by a relatively small number of people globally, I have to say, it's important that we actually name and identify the violence of the states, the violence of corporations, and what they are doing. Right? They are destroying all efforts. Right now, one of the worst statistics I can give you is, ten years ago, an organization called Global Witness, who does some really good work. They were measuring that we were losing two environmental activists every week, right? They now, the latest reports, we are losing four activists every single week, nameless to many, hidden from the view of the media, or ignored, but that's the reality. So, having said that, Activism has to also be looking at ourself and always saying, how can we be better? How can we shift people? How do we bring people on our side? And yeah, I think that, you know, let's take civil disobedience, which is what you focused on. Civil disobedience is one extremely important tool in the struggle for justice toolbox, right? Historically, what we know is that when people face terrible injustices or challenge, it was only when decent women and men stood up and said, enough is enough, I'm prepared to go to prison, I'm prepared to give my life if necessary, that change came. And that's the moment where we are. However, having said that, you know, civil disobedience is a very contextual thing, right? And like any tool, you have to use it strategically. And if you overuse it, it can also get planted. So let me ask you a question here. How many of you know what's mooning? Mooning? Okay, so mooning, okay, most of you don't know. I never thought I would be educating Americans on mooning. But let me, let me try. So mooning is if, say, ten of us want to make a poster saying, Stop climate change, but we couldn't get our posters into the meeting. We would each paint one letter on our bum cheek, and then we'll pull our pants down, turn around, and they'll say, Stop climate change. Now, that might be super effective in New York and in San Francisco as a strategy. It might not work that well in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, for example. Or for that matter, Montana, right? But we have to give Montana credit for having got that good legal decision. So, so, so I think, you know, also what you need to be, the number of incidents where people went and, you know, put their things on paintings and so on. By the way, mostly with things that could easily be cleaned and not long term damage. It's the privileged elites of our society in the media and so on went bonkers about it. But they control the media. And therefore, I'll just end by saying why programs like this are so important, like Climate One, is our biggest challenge we face. It's not whether we got the right policies and the right, uh, you know, specific technical strategies. The biggest problem we have is that we have a media environment that we operate in. Like the United States, where close to after people get one reality from Fox Newsmax and right wing talk radio and the others get a different perspective and the bottom line is to advance climate justice, we have to address the issue of communications, and how can we talk to people that moves them into action.

Greg Dalton: And do you think that climate philanthropy recognizes that? Because what I see is a lot of climate philanthropy is focused on policy, policy, policy. They underinvest in communications, which you just, you said Steve Bannon and Donald Trump understand communications and the narrative and the left is saying, oh, but science, oh, science.

Kumi Naidoo: So, without naming any foundations or anything, let me say thankfully there's some new kids on the block who seem to get it, right? And you know, uh, that we have to invest there, but I want to be blunt here. In the United States and globally, we don't really have that much philanthropy. We have mostly fool anthropy, right? Where we are fooling ourselves that we're making a difference, where we are using resources in ways that are not courageous enough, not strategic enough, and so on. Because how do people move into action, move to do things, right? And here I just want to conclude this point by saying people like myself must also take, uh, responsibility for the kinds of personas we are allowed to be projected. Lots of people see me as like a serious committed, hardworking, overworking person, right, who is like always 24 seven. That's not the image we want to send to people. We need to send the thing. You can be an activist and you can live a life and you can make change. And most importantly, as Secretary General of Amnesty International, when we gave the Ambassador of Conscious Award to Greta Thunberg and Fridays for the Future, these are the words I said. You know, I said, The thing that hurts me, right, is that your generation, these kids generation, have to do so much. And I apologized for the, our failure as a generation. And then I said, but please do us one favor, execute your activism with fun, sing, dance, laugh, celebrate each other. And unless we're able to encourage people to have a positive feeling about activism, right? We don't stand a chance.

Greg Dalton: So too much focus on facts. More heart, more stories. You’ve promoted what you refer to as “artivism,” and written that “Mobilising the power of arts and culture may not on its own deliver justice, but without it, our efforts will surely fail.” So talk about the importance of artivism.

Kumi Naidoo: So, I think most of you know that in history, arts and culture has been used very, very effectively by fascists and Nazis and so on, right? So I don't want to say arts and culture by its very nature is always progressive, but let me do a quick story on it, Iceland, right? I'm the Secretary General of Amnesty at that time, I get a call from one of the most amazing artists in the world, a guy called Olafur Eliasson, uh, who's from Iceland, and he calls me, he says, Kumi, can you please come to Iceland? And he says, can you please bring Mary RobinsonSo I said, what's happening in Iceland? So he says, no, we're having a funeral, right? You need to come for this funeral. And then I say, oh, I'm really sorry, who passed away? And then he said, an iceberg, right? And Mary and I went, and we stood with the prime minister of Iceland. And about 500 people go up this dead iceberg, and there's a plaque there which says something like, you know, we know what we should do at this moment in history, and if you're reading this plaque now, it means that we probably succeeded at something better than what I just said. But do you know, the impact of that event was a thousand percent more effective than 90 percent of the actions that I did while I was at Greenpeace. the way it actually moved people.

Greg Dalton: I saw a very powerful one in Egypt where doctors stood up in white coats inside the conference and they said, my patients are dying from climate impacts. And then that, that clinician lied down on the ground. It was very powerful to see clinicians one after one saying the people I've taken an oath to care for are dying from climate impacts that they did not cause.

Kumi Naidoo: And let me just say, you know, we, my better half Louisa is here with me, and we had a. terrible tragedy when our son took his life, uh, two years ago. And in the last conversation, he was a very successful hip hop artist and, uh, rapper. And the last face to face conversation I had with him, he basically, that Louisa and I had with him, he said something along these lines, you know, you guys, you're not really good at what you do. You've all been fighting for democracy, human rights, climate, and so on, and everything is going in the wrong direction, right? So maybe you should just chill. You're old now, just chill, spend more time with us, and, and so on. But what that's encouraged us to continue doing is to look at. Because he moved millions of people through one song, you know? Millions of people, you know? And made them feel good about themselves, made them feel positive and so on. And so, of course, I should say that he was really pulling our legs a lot. He didn't necessarily literally believe what he was saying. But what's clear to me right now, If we don't harness the full power of arts and culture as part of reaching people, moving people, and if we look at the history of struggles all over the world, right, including the anti apartheid struggle, you know how central arts and culture was to our struggle because most of our people were not able to read and write. And that was a conscious design of the apartheid state, right? And so, I remember in my teens, one of the campaigns, in a working class, communities, was when things were really bad. Depression, cost of living, everything. Just one big Zulu word in English, three words, was what communicated the whole message. Asinamali, which meant, we do not have money. Right. But sometimes the simplest words are the ones that can move people rather than coming up with terms like LULUCF, which stands for land use, land use, change for forestry, a very, very often quoted thing at climate negotiations.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, we're good at jargon in climate world. You're now writing a book, Reflections of a Failed Activist, what are your greatest failures and successes?

Kumi Naidoo: So, firstly, I just want to say, right, had all those that have been part of the world of activism not done what they did. Whichever place you were, whether you were at the YMCA, or whether you were at Greenpeace or Amnesty, had all of that not happened, the world would be in a much it would be a time up for climate. Long time ago, we would have lost on climate.

Greg Dalton: We've made a lot of progress. Some progress. Not enough, but we've definitely made some.

Kumi Naidoo: Well, I don't know whether I would put it as strongly as that. I would say that we, we, we've been holding the wall from crushing us, right? We've been pushing the wall back and we've held and contained it a bit, but. I cannot tell you how much of time we have all spent in what young people now dismiss as handshake activism. You know, going in good faith and meeting with UN bodies, CEOs of big companies, uh, and, and, you know, it was a ritualistic exercise. What would happen was, I would go into, like, say if I was meeting with the President of Afghanistan, for example. When I go into that meeting, I pretty much know what he's going to say to me. He pretty much knows what I'm going to say to him, right? He ticks off a box, civil society consulted. I tick off a box, government advocated upon, and nothing changes, right? Now I'm, listen, so I'm, I'm caricaturing here, right? I'm not saying as a principle, we should never engage with government and business. But at some point we have to look at what's the return on that investment and it doesn't look good at all, right? And so, so I don't know the answers to what the solution is, right? But I do know that all struggles are dependent on the participation of people who are impacted.

Ariana Brocious: That was the activist and climate leader Kumi Naidoo. Coming up, when it comes to addressing climate chaos, we’re all in this together.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin: The youth agenda is no different than the Black agenda than the Indigenous agenda. Because at the end of the day we need to be in a space where we can move the needle for change because there is no separation of success here.

Ariana Brocious: How to join forces… That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. We like to explore many different kinds of activism on the show and the power of culture to affect change. Sometimes this iscalled “artivism”: combining art with activism.

Greg Dalton: And for the show with Kumi Naidoo, I invited a young poet to join us on the stage. Her name is Alex Ajose Nixon – and she’s just 17 years old.

Alex Ajose Nixon: What should be the goal of humanity? Everything is just a mess, I mean, Fracking factories and oil spills overseas No one says thank you or please unless they're spreading the disease Of spoiled brats who waste everything While others are praying on their knees Everything is for money these days And there's no space for the games we played The idea of fun is funny to say But bombing foreign countries Yeah, that's okay There's so many people that aren't thriving and so many people that aren't trying and dude you gotta open your eyes cuz look around everything's dying.

Ariana Brocious: You can hear her full poem on our website – we’ve got a link in our show notes and at climate one dot org. And wow. The power of words.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, it made me question. Am I doing enough? Am I lying to myself? Am I lying to my children? What are we doing here, people? And her performance reminded me of a conversation I had a couple years ago with Hip Hop artist and educator Mystic.

She’s one of the clearest thinkers I know about the power of art. And she speaks from decades of experience, as an artist with Digital Underground and as an activist and educator with the Hip Hop Caucus.

Mystic: Art plays in its many different manifestations, right. It plays this role of opening up pathways for communication and understanding. It helps to shift the culture that is felt in the community, in the room. It can help shift the culture in the context of legislation and policy makers. Art allows people to tune in, right. I think sometimes when we’re enjoying ourselves or engaging with art, some of our defenses come down. And particular for me as a music artist music is a universal language, right. I've had the privilege to study in South Africa and to work with children in Haiti and children and youth and indigenous youth in Canada. And you know children in various parts of the nation and part of what I know is that people sing along to songs whether they understand what the words are saying but the art itself is a bridge. It helps to build a bridge across man-made borders and the beautiful variety of cultures that exist. Art is also the voice of the unheard and the excluded if we’re using it right, right? And if we understand the power of what that art is. Art has this unlimited power to open up conversations so that we can work collectively. I also understand having engaged in research on culturally relevant arts education that because it's so powerful people can also use art to kind of subvert the will of the people and to push forward, you know, authoritarian messages, so we have to be careful, and we have to understand that art can be powerful no matter who is using it.

Greg Dalton: Traditionally most science communication and this includes a lot of climate communication follows the information deficit model. If we just give people more information, that's what's needed to affect change. And then there are sort of the empathy or emotional deficit model: if we can get people to feel more that will prompt action. I’m curious how you think about this as a musical artist and now you’re involved in film, that emotional connection versus, you know, do you need to get people to feel more or know more?

Mystic: Right. There is so much information that's hitting us from all angles in where we are, right. Whether it's via social media or the radio or in our communities, we’re constantly being bombarded with information and that can be an overload. Scientific research and when it's presented in this kind of, we need more information, the understanding that information is not guaranteed. It's not that people lack intelligence. It's just how do you take that science and that data and apply it to your everyday life and what you're experiencing. Like what does that science and data mean when your community floods even on sunny days, right. And so, I think that part of the power of music and film and just creativity and culture is that, that is about connecting on an emotional level, but you also have to take an approach like look. Typically, my verses are 16 bars. I can't try to fit in there the science, right. As academic I can actually read some of those scientific documents and the data.

Greg Dalton: There’s no footnotes in your lyrics, right?

Mystic: Right. There’s no footnotes in my lyrics. But it’s figuring out I don't just create my art for myself it's about communication art. And so, I think in some ways it's equally if not more powerful than just offering more information that is in the form of data and scientific language when you can use art. More people can connect with that they can gravitate to it and it can be cool and it can make you move and it can make you understand in a different way what's happening. You know when we talk about the climate movement or the environmental movement more broadly, the movement there have often been disconnects between the crisis that we’re facing and what's happening. And then how do we create information and knowledge and resources that is culturally relevant and responsive in ways that the communities that we want to communicate with can receive what we’re trying to say, right.

Greg Dalton: How do you know if your art has any effect, it can emotionally connect but how do you know if it causes change and do you have any specific examples of when art has really changed someone's mind or really had a tangible impact?

Mystic: I probably have more than we could talk about in the space of this conversation. I have fans across kind of areas maybe that people wouldn't expect, but people who are police officers and people who work in government as well. And they too will have conversations though maybe ask me and challenge me about something I’ve said or say, hey, I'm not that kind of person, right. But that they've come to me and said that listening to my music has given them ways different ways to think about our communities and to think about the ways that they serve. And maybe it's not the art itself but being an artist and being nominated for awards, it might not be the music but it's my platform that gets me into the room to speak with politicians that gets me into the room to be able to speak to what is on the table in terms of legislation and the importance evident to advocate for what our communities need.

[music]

Ariana Brocious: That was Hip Hop artist and educator, Mystic. You can hear more of that conversation by going to our website, Climate One dot org.

[music starts to fade]

There are lots of ways for activists to find their audiences. Some make music… some interrupt meetings, or glue themselves to runways.

Greg Dalton: Those people don’t speak to me personally, BUT I do see their desperation that comfortable elites are not going to make the required change in the time necessary. We gotta all move faster, and wake up.

Ariana Brocious: As things get more dire, I think more people feel like this sort of disruptive action is necessary. One question I have is: how do we measure the effectiveness of that action?

Greg Dalton: One person who’s done actual research into the effects of more confrontational activism is Sociologist and Professor Dana Fisher.

Dana Fisher: Confrontational activism has gotten much more common. It also has kind of broken into what I think of as two different camps in terms of disruption. So, we have disruption like the people who threw food, threw paint, used crazy glue. And that’s the kind of disruption which I'm calling disruption as shock. And that is becoming increasingly popular and we see it all around the world at this point targeting art, targeting meetings, targeting performances. In all those cases, the goal of that tactic specifically is to get public attention. And they want to basically reach out and try to mobilize more people in the general public, what they think of as you know, sympathizers to the movement.

Greg Dalton: But when those sorts of things happen I have to wonder whether they repel more than they recruit. That it turns more people off than it wakes people up.

Dana Fisher: Well, I mean I think the expectation here and the research backs this up is that it will not change minds. This is really a type of activism that’s about taking people who are already sympathetic to the cause and you're getting increasingly worried because of atmospheric rivers or because of forest fires or because of this extreme weather that's been happening in Europe or the melting, you know, glaciers, or the list goes on and on, or, or, or. And those people think they need to do something but they haven’t yet mobilized to do anything. That’s really the point for these activists, and in a lot of ways they use what we call the radical flank effect to push the activism to a more extreme place that mobilizes people to be more willing to participate in moderate types of activism and support for moderate groups. And there's a lot of research that documents that that works that way.

Greg Dalton: Right. We know that there’s what 9% of Americans are sort of hard-boiled deniers. There’s a big group in the middle that accepts climate change is happening according to the Yale’s Six Americas is probably the most authoritative poll on this. And so, what I’m hearing is it’s those people who say, yeah, climate change is happening, it's real, but aren’t really doing much about it. It's about activating that disengaged part of the population.

Dana Fisher: That's exactly right. I mean I would just say within that middle group. I think that most of the people who are engaged in this more destructive type of activism are really looking for the more left-leaning of those group; they're not even trying to get all the moderates. They’re trying to get the moderates who supported the passage of the IRA, but they are worried that it's not enough. Those people. And the idea is to bring them into the movement and to support more climate action and more extreme measures to get to the kind of climate action that's necessary. That's the only audience for this type of action.

Greg Dalton: Political movements are focused on goals that can be specific: oust a dictator stop a war, overturn a Supreme Court decision and less specific in conceptual justice equality, etc. In the case of climate there are very specific numbers overarching numbers 1.5 or 2°C of postindustrial heating and many sub-goals, of course. How do you see the goals of the transition away from fossil fuels in the context of other social movements?

Dana Fisher: I would just say that the climate movement is really very, very similar to these other movements where there are these grand goals these big goals, you know. Climate justice, you know, achieving the Paris goals, which is actually a more specific goal than just climate justice of course, which is just transition away from fossil fuels toward a clean energy future. We see the same thing in other movements. And in fact, I think that because there's so much science backing up the climate crisis, the climate activists are more capable of embedding these broader goals within more narrow campaigns. The big question you know in a lot of my work is how do we get from these activist tactics to those goals which in some cases are so far away from the actual tactics and the targets of the activism. Say, for example, when Declare Emergency had activists spilling paint covering of this Dégas statue. How exactly does that lead us to reducing CO2 emission concentrations in the atmosphere to the degree that we actually hold global heating below 1.5°C? That's a very, very, very big, big arc to get there. And, you know, it goes through public perceptions to theoretically getting public pressure to then electoral politics that then theoretically leads to elected officials actually voting in a way that they say they will when they run for office which we all know is you know a question whenever you support somebody, to that whatever they support getting actually passed and implemented effectively and then might lead to these goals. And so, it’s such a long and indirect road.

Greg Dalton: Right. And which is why people might choose other more direct things that is not either/or, but you know if I take personal action, switch out to a heat pump or something like that. It’s like I know how much that's done. It doesn't solve the big picture, but it's more direct control.

Dana Fisher: I would just say that’s absolutely true. One of the things that I've talked a lot with climate activists about is the types of individual measures you can take simultaneously. But as somebody who spent a bunch of time studying this and working with the IPCC on this, we now there is overwhelming evidence that just our individual actions like we just put solar on our house is absolutely insufficient for getting us where we need to go.

Ariana Brocious: That was Sociologist and Professor Dana Fisher. She’s got a new book out now called “Saving Ourselves.”

Greg Dalton: Saving Ourselves: It’s not something any of us can do alone... But there’s real power in the collective. I want to close the show today with Tamara Toles O’Laughlin. She’s President and CEO of Environmental Grantmakers Association and former Director of 350.org North America. She describes herself as an advocate for the People & the Planet.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin: We’re in a moment where we’re all pushing for the same thing at once. Energy needs wisdom and vice versa and so we are in a time when the youth agenda is no different than the Black agenda than the Indigenous agenda. Because at the end of the day we need to be in a space where we can move the needle for change because there is no separation of success here. We’re in a time test as Bill McKibben likes to call it. And I assure you that at the end when the buzzer is up, we’ll all be in the same boat so we might as well be running in the same direction.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin: My gut is politicians only do we give them room to do and what you give them cover for. So, our politics are only as bad as our engagement. So, at the end of the day if you don't like what's happening you can push the button and make them move away. And if you want them to do more you can get out on the street and create an agenda for yourself. We are no longer in a time where we need a proxy, we set up proxies to make the work happen. So, I do think look in the mirror and figure out how are you willing to go to get the world you want to live in and who you else you need to bring along with you because there is no such thing as alone will save us from climate.

Greg Dalton: On the show today... We’ve been talking about how activism can win bigger and faster. You can find links and more information… in the show notes on our website, climate one dot org. While you’re there, subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get a preview of next week’s episode and a look at the biggest stories in the world of climate.

Ariana Brocious: Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. You can help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. It really helps people find the show. And if you like what you hear, consider joining us on Patreon and supporting the show that way.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Jenny Lawton is consulting producer. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy and Philip Yun are co-CEOs of The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action

2:15 - Kumi Naidoo on the passing of Alexei Navalny
9:24 - Kumi Naidoo on the power ordinary people have
12:44 - Kumi Naidoo on the tensions between inclusion and speed of climate action
17:01 - Kumi Naidoo on the “disease” of affluenza
29:12 - Kumi Naidoo on speaking to the heart and not the head
36:32 - Kumi Naidoo on the climate progress we’ve made
38:35 - Excerpt from Alex Ajose Nixon poem
40:18 - Mystic on the importance of art and activism
47:37 - Dana Fisher on confrontational activism
53:57 - Tamara Toles O’Laughlin on the shared climate agenda

Play

Climate One TV: Rebecca Solnit on Why It’s Not Too Late

BenTestani — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:36:59 +0000

Climate One TV: Rebecca Solnit on Why It’s Not Too Late

Air Date

January 3, 2024

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit has been examining hope and the unpredictability of change for over 20 years. In 2023 she co-edited an anthology called, “It’s Not Too Late,” which serves as a guidebook for changing the climate narrative from despair to possibility. How can we find hope on a warming planet?

Guests

Rebecca Solnit

Writer, historian, and activist

Play

Podcast

Rebecca Solnit on Why It’s Not Too Late

November 3, 2023

Looking at climate devastation while witnessing a lack of political urgency to address the crisis, it can be easy to spiral into a dark place ....

Is This a Joke? Comedy and Climate Communication

BenTestani — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:19 +0000

Is This a Joke? Comedy and Climate Communication

10/27/2023

Laughter can be good medicine, but when is it okay to laugh at something as deadly serious as the climate crisis? Some comedians use comedy as a tool to make important information more accessible, memorable and digestible.

Rollie Williams is a comedian and host of the online climate comedy channel Climate Town. He moved to New York with the goal of being a comedian. One of his first shows was called an Inconvenient Talk Show, where Williams played a comedic version of Al Gore. Williams had so many climate professionals on the show that he became a climate advocate, and he used the skills he had to bring awareness to the climate crisis.

“I'm coming at this from a comedic perspective. That's my one tool in my toolbox. So when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Williams says his climate comedy grew out of a frustration with the limited climate media available at the time.

“It's just a tough sell to be like, “hey, watch this two hour long documentary that is going to make you feel bad. And then have not a lot of upside at the end of it.”” But he decided that he needed a better climate education to do the subject justice. “How do I make my show really good? Well, I guess I can go back to school, and I went back to grad school for a climate science and policy degree.”

Williams created Climate Town in the mold of The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight. “My big OG role model is Jon Stewart. I remember the first ever time I saw an episode of The Daily Show. And it just changed my understanding of media,” Williams says.

“Comedy does lots of things, including allowing us to talk about taboo issues that sometimes otherwise cannot really be addressed,” says Caty Borum, executive director of the Center for Media and Social Impact and provost associate professor at American University. But finding humor in climate chaos isn’t easy. One reason is the subject’s complexity. “There's no way to get the laugh if you're too busy in the wonky details because you've completely lost the audience,” Borum says.

Jokes can also send people farther into ideological camps if one side of a debate is targeted and ridiculed. For example, a joke that makes fun of someone who denies the climate crisis is more likely to encourage that person hold that position even more strongly. Borum says, “Comedy should not be burdened with the utility of the humor. Comedians should be funny first. But if you're going to do climate change comedy, you should at least... not want to do harm, right?”

While the primary goal of comedy is to make people laugh, it can reframe the way people see their world. And when it comes to justice and equity, that reframing can make the difference.

“If it gets people to shine a little flashlight into their own thinking and put a little crack in our kind of what we think of as our really rote understanding of the social construct, and what we do about them, that's actually really valuable,” Borum says. “It requires us to move beyond the status quo about how issues have been told to us.”

Guests

Rollie Williams

Comedian, Host, Climate Town

Caty Borum

Provost Assoc. Professor, American University

Climate Town (youtube.com)

Center for Media & Social Impact (cmsimpact.org)

A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice (amazon.com)

How Do You Laugh About Death? The Comedians Tackling Climate Change (theguardian.com)

Can comedy help us communicate climate change better? (climatecommshub.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Ariana Brocious: Greg, I have a climate joke for you: how do you think the U.S. will address this year’s record high temperatures?

Greg Dalton: …By going to the beach or a lake?

Ariana Brocious: By switching from Farenheit to Celsius!

Greg Dalton: (groan) Okay, I have one for you. We haven’t found a solution for climate change yet, but we’re definitely getting warmer!

Ariana Brocious: Oh man, that’s bad.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, and not true. This is Climate One, I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: I’m Ariana Brocious. And today we’re digging into climate comedy, and maybe we should leave the comedy to the professionals.

Greg Dalton: That’s probably a good idea. I like to laugh as much as the next person, but putting aside our bad opening jokes found on the internet, I actually find it pretty tough to joke about climate. I mean, it’s a serious existential issue, and I worry about the jokes being at the expense of real people and human suffering.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, I know what you mean. And I also think a good laugh can help, even when things are dark, unpredictable and scary. It’s a way to release some of the tension we carry. It also helps you connect with people who might be experiencing the same thing.

Greg Dalton: Good comedy is often on the edge of things that are socially unacceptable.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, but good comedy gets at that tension. It calls out things that are hard.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, I hear Chris Rock say things that are funny, and oh man, you can say that?? Kind of at that painful, uncomfortable edge. It’s why they’re funny.

Ariana Brocious: And as we’ll hear from today’s guests, some people are using comedy as an agent of change to educate and activate people around the climate crisis.

Greg Dalton: So climate is serious, and this is usually a serious show, but today get ready to laugh. First up, my conversation with Rollie Williams, creator and host of the digital comedy series Climate Town. It’s informative and funny. He’s a comedian and also holds a degree in climate science and policy from Columbia University. He gave us the story of how his two passions came together.

Rollie Williams: I moved to New York to pursue comedy and I was doing shows at night and, I was tutoring during the day. Sometimes I worked for digital media companies, video editing during the day and every night I would go out to comedy theaters and I would try to perform 2-3 shows a night if I could. And, eventually, I established a relationship with a couple of comedy theaters, and one of the theaters had a cancellation, and they said, Hey, Rollie, can you put up a show? We have a show, like, a night, and we don't have anything to fill it. Will you do a show? And so I, I pitched, I was like, Oh yeah, I got a show. No problem. Don't even worry about it. And then the next day I was trying to figure out what the show could be about. And I was in a Barnes and Noble and I saw on the shelf a copy of Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth, the book, which he made, I guess, after his incredibly powerful documentary popped off. And, you know, he like became a bit of a household name again after losing the 2000 election. And so I thought, oh, that would be interesting if Al Gore was sort of on like an I Told You So tour about climate change, because it was about 2015 at this point, or maybe 2016. And so I, I pitched the show as like, Oh, it's an inconvenient truth 2, listen up, you fugly idiots, was like kind of the premise of the show. And it would be Al Gore kind of yelling at you. And that show was bad. It was not a terribly good show, but they let me put it up another time. And then another theater picked it up. And eventually I got to performing this on a monthly basis and it sort of morphed into a talk show. It was just a comedy show. It was intended to be a comedy show where I played Al Gore through the, you know, like did a whole talk show through the lens of kind of like a crotchety grandpa character who like was also in a polyamorous relationship with a bunch of celebrities. That was kind of a runner. And then eventually, it just got to the point where I was having enough climate experts on the show as a joke, and then I got to know them as people, and they were all really smart and worried about climate change. And eventually, I realized, like, oh, I should, I should actually double down on climate change. And so I decided, oh, how do I make my show really good? Well, I guess I can go back to school, and I went back to grad school. Columbia for a climate science and policy degree to make the show better. And then through that, I sort of my merged my comedy and climate expertise together.

Greg Dalton: I have to ask, can we hear your Al Gore impersonation?

Rollie Williams: Oh, it's bad. It never got better, but I'll do it. Yeah, it's, um, um, Well, you know, my wife, Tipper Gore, and I like to go out every night and, uh, furiously make out on the stage of the democratic national convention. And it's, uh, if you played it right next to an Al Gore clip, it would be like, that is completely different. There's almost no crossover, but I just didn't put any real effort into doing that impression very well, and as a result, it was a terrible impression.

Greg Dalton: But it worked well enough, I guess, to get you to where you are now. So I gotta admit, when I first came across you, I thought that you were, a climate policy person who taped, you know, painters tape with a lapel mic to your shirt and walked around and did this dorky scientist thing. I thought you went from policy to comedy, but you came the other way from comedy to policy.

Rollie Williams: Yeah. Now, Greg, I won't take offense to that, but it hurt a little bit to hear you say those things. Um, no, I, I'm coming at this from a purely, from a, from a comedic background. I find a lot of humor in the hypocrisy of, you know, oil companies declaring net zero and that sort of thing. And so I'm like trying to explore the comedy that is implicit, I think, in the subject matter. But before I could really good at that, I had to first learn the subject matter. So that took me back to school.

Greg Dalton: And it's pretty clear that some of the deep research you do from, you know, finding the court cases where GM, you know, sued public transit agencies. And so, you know, the, the BP actual advertising campaign, which we'll get to in a minute. So you're able to make a living as a climate comedian, that's pretty, you know, impressive. What does that say about the appetite for what you do? Cause climate is often so dark, not seen as a funny conversation at all.

Rollie Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I think it says that people are, you know, people are aware and people are clued in, but it's just a tough sell to be like, Hey, watch this two hour long documentary that is going to make you feel bad. And then have not a lot of upside at the end of it. It's just a tough, especially in today's media landscape when, like, there's a hundred billion videos people could be watching. And if you're not funnier than, like, half of them, why would somebody want to watch a video that you, like, what, what's the special thing that you bring to the video? And for me, I'm, I, I'm coming at this from a comedic perspective. That's my one tool in my toolbox. So when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail when you have like a comedy background and you're bad at everything else, like that's basically the only thing you can you can foist upon your audience.

Greg Dalton: I remember when the Daily Show became really popular with Jon Stewart and people were concerned like oh my gosh, that's comedy. It's not the news, but you had to understand the news to get the jokes. You have to be somewhat informed to get the jokes. So what were you some of your comic role models and what are you trying to do with your comedy, your climate comedy?

Rollie Williams: I mean, Greg, you kind of nailed it. My big OG role model is Jon Stewart. I remember the first ever time I saw an episode of The Daily Show. And it just changed my understanding of like, media. Because it wasn't, it wasn't just like a goofy comedy guy, it was a dude, point by point, going through an argument, and then refuting it, like with perfect, logical judo. And also, it was funny the entire time. And it was just this incredible, like, confluence of things that I like, which are like, comedy, media, and being technically correct about stuff. And that group of items really made me love Jon Stewart. I also like John Oliver. Uh, I guess if you're a comedian named Jon, you're really getting a step up. George Carlin, I thought a lot of George Carlin's material was really, really funny. It's important to be both funny at the thing and also saying something interesting. And that's why I liked, you know, those particular people so much.

Greg Dalton: Right. Let's talk about a couple of videos you've made starting with your carbon footprint is BS. In the video, you play the British Petroleum ad where they bring the term carbon footprint to a mass audience and push the burden of emissions reduction from the oil company to everyday individuals. Can you walk me through that story of the personal carbon footprint?

Rollie Williams: So this was originally research, I think that was unearthed by Dr. Jeffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes. So these are two, and by the way, like I'm doing, when I say I like researching stuff, I'm basically going to a suite of journalists who are actually doing the making phone calls and interviewing and like digging up documents. And I'm like following along behind them, picking up their breadcrumbs and like, making comedy videos about them. So they are the absolute heroes thatI couldn't make a video without them. Just FYI. So yeah, the story goes a little something like this. People are worried about carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are fueling the carbon concentration in the atmosphere, and it sort of feels like some kind of regulation might slam down and affect companies that are mostly responsible for supplying the fossil fuels that are getting burned and turning into carbon emissions. And so a lot of these fossil fuel companies who were, by the way, doing a lot of research into climate change before it was common knowledge and, and actually knew about it way early and have a ton of internal documentation talking about, like, how do we cover this up? Like, what, what are we going to say? How do we like, kind of emphasize a doubt that that's in the minds of our scientists that wasn't really there.

Greg Dalton: Doubt is their product, right? They got that from tobacco.

Rollie Williams: Yeah. It's, it's just a good tactic, right? If you can kind of. Break the problem down and say, Oh, it's not a corporation. It's everybody's individual demand that's forcing us to supply them with oil. We can't be held accountable for what these people are demanding from us. And simultaneously, if you kind of move the conversation from “should corporations reduce their emissions” to “should people reduce their emissions,” then you don't have a problem. And you don't have a lot of regulations coming down the pike for corporations. It's more like, how can we reduce our personal carbon footprint? It's, we shift the blame onto the individual person and kind of take the onus off of the corporations who have obviously the highest levers of power to reduce their emissions. Like the last place you want to look is all the way downstream when you have to change a billion people's individual behavior, when you could effectively just change like basketball court sized group of people's behavior and cut off emissions at the stem.

Greg Dalton: So what's the funny part of that? How did you make that funny?

Rollie Williams: For me, the funny part is going into the documentation and seeing BP's original ads that were much less nuanced. And, and I don't think it was clear to early BP that all the footage that they were producing was going to be on the internet forever, right? The internet wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a known quantity. So they would put out ads that they didn't realize were going to be just available to some future man in 2022 to like look up and analyze and see like, oh, right, you're like, systematically asking people on the street, like what their carbon footprint is, and then asking them to go calculate it. And then you've also got an internal memo that talks about downplaying the corporate responsibility. And when you put it together with the benefit of hindsight, it's, it's like, I guess it's, it was funny to people who watched it, I think.

Greg Dalton: In another exposé on the oil industry, you made a video about the Exxon executive who revealed how the company lies to the public and influences legislators. This has been well documented by Naomi Oreskes, who you mentioned and others, a historian of science at Harvard. Let's start with the confessions you thought were most important. First is the admission that Exxon worked with shadow groups. Let's listen to that clip of Keith McCoy, Exxon's former senior director for federal relations.

KEITH MCCOY: Did we join some of these shadow groups, uh, to work against some of the early efforts? Yes. That’s true. Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Uh, yes. You know, we were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.

Greg Dalton: That's Keith McCoy, Exxon's former senior director for federal relations. He thinks he's in a job interview there. It's actually Greenpeace fronting as an employer.

Rollie Williams: I mean, this is one of my favorite ever things caught on camera right up there with like the OG viral videos of like grape stomp lady and like Charlie bit my finger and Keith McCoy speed confessing to a bunch of crimes that Exxon committed because he hoped to get a job with this other company. For me, the confession, the fact that he kept on reframing the question as part of the answer, as if he was like, I think they must have asked him to do that so that they could show it to whoever was going to watch it. But it just created this moment where he would say, did now, did we do this? And then you'd expect him to be like, no, of course not, to deny it. Cause that's what Exxon is famous for doing. And then he said, now, did we do this? Yes. Okay. Yes. We did fight against some of the science that we knew is real. But did we do, did we work with shadow groups? Yes. Again, of course we did do that. Um, and just like the fact that for once they caught an Exxon insider without their guard up and they got so much information out of him like 30 years of it wasn't me is, you know, up in smoke in one zoom call, right?

Greg Dalton: And I think he's separated from the company recently and see after that. And Exxon CEO Darren Woods disavowed, uh, what Keith McCoy said. Let's listen to another clip of Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy that outlines Exxon's thinking on political influence, this time specifically around the infrastructure bill as it was being drafted.

KEITH MCCOY: We're playing defense because President Biden is talking about this big infrastructure package and he's going to pay for it by increasing corporate taxes. On the Democrat side, we look for the moderates on these issues. So it's the Manchins, it's the Testers. Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week. Um, he is the kingmaker, uh, on this because he's a Democrat from West Virginia, which is a very conservative state, who’s up for reelection, so you can have those conversations with them because they're a captive audience. They know they need you and I need them.

Greg Dalton: Yeah. So what do you think when you hear that now, considering how the infrastructure bill turned out, um, and Manchin's role in, in the IRA?

Rollie Williams: Yeah, I mean, it, it, sadly and depressingly, it kind of broke right along the lines that Keith McCoy was mentioning, where it was originally pitched as something like a 2 trillion or 1.9 trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that got whittled down to around a 500 billion-dollar plan, which is almost precisely, even numerically what he was pitching in this call. And I think just the fact that he so clearly articulated this a little bit open secret in American politics that you just like never say it. Corporations just never say that they have this kind of influence over politicians and they just caught him just just saying the quiet part loud, which I think was just and so so perfectly phrased where every moment when it's as if you were to write a script where what you would want What you would want an Exxon lobbyist to actually say and then he just kind of stumbled into it. And I think you mentioned that, you know, he is no longer with the company, but he was still employed by Exxon for multiple months after this story broke. his LinkedIn page was “employed by Exxon” for, I think, up to six months after this moment. And my whole point was like, if, if you disown this man, if you're like, oh, everything he's saying does not represent us, this, we don't even know, we don't even know this guy that well, like, yeah, he was working with us, but like, I, I don't, I never liked him. Like, if you're saying that, and then you don't fire him immediately. What does that say about how much you actually don't align with what he was saying? Like, how could you keep him on for six more months if he speed-confessed to crimes? It's just, it's crazy to me.

Greg Dalton: Today, a conversation with climate comedian Rollie Williams.

Ariana Brocious: Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, trying to measure the impact of climate comedy on the internet:

Rollie Williams: Are people, like, changing their behavior and changing what they're doing based on new information that I learned, thought was important and so I put into a video.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. Today we’re chatting with comedian and climate policy guy Rollie Williams.

Ariana: A recent video of his focused on how much our lives are influenced by parking – a subject we recently covered on Climate One with our interview with Henry Grabar.

Greg: Rollie Williams says most of his videos focus on corporate malfeasance, but parking is a different story.

Rollie Williams: Parking in America, at least, didn't become a huge problem because of a corporation scheming to make it that way. We kind of walked our way, we sort of backwardly, blindly walked our way into it. in America, there's like between four and eight parking spots for every car. We are a nation of pavement. Some huge percentage of urban area is dedicated to parking. The city streets are, you know, like you can imagine 300 square feet in a city, like to own 300 square feet of real estate in a city would cost you like, you know, 1,000 a month or something. Some like large price, but every single city street is free parking in most of America. So, like, we are subsidizing parking because that's just the way we've built our cities. We've built our cities around cars. So I wanted to get into parking lots specifically and why we keep overbuilding parking lots. And it turns out there are these rules in city zoning contracts that are called minimum parking requirements that literally force companies, no matter how much parking they think they're going to need, no matter how much parking they actually need, it forces a new building to build X amount of parking based on this weird, archaic, and mostly arbitrary series of tables and charts that will just force American companies to overbuild parking in almost every scenario. And so we keep on developing our cities into these weird, like, low, one story, boxy stores, like chain stores, and long roads, and just cracked pavement. And it's just like a real never ending cycle.

Greg Dalton: Right. And some cities, San Francisco in particular, have decoupled housing development from parking that you don't have to have that minimum or you don't have to build any new parking. And so some jurisdictions are going the other direction. And the other thing I thought was interesting in that video was how you showed how the early days there was like horses and then cars, just like there was no place to park. You just like parked on the sidewalk and in France and some cities, Paris these days, they still have the kind of little spikes to make people not park on the sidewalks. And then cities developed parking garages and they thought pretty quickly realized that's expensive. How about if we have companies and private developers pay for parking so the taxpayers and cities don't, and then you get to the minimum parking requirements. So that's the sort of the world seeing through parking, which is a pretty interesting lens. And then you turn to gas stoves and another video on Climate Town where you highlight the slogan cooking with gas and it's accompanied by an interesting song. Let's take a listen to cooking with gas.

Rollie Williams: Can't wait.

GAS RAP: Cooking with gas. Gas, cooking with gas. We all cook better when we're cooking with gas. Gas, gas is so hot it's not on when it's not. It's the only way to cook. That's what we, that's what we were taught.

Rollie Williams: That's what we were taught.

Greg Dalton: So that's, yeah. Right. I mean, that's clever. So what's the impact of that? And who's, who's, who's doing that?

Rollie Williams: Yeah. So, I mean, I had the just pleasure of going back through the archives of all these old gas utility ads and gas company ads, and they were just having fun with it. Like, that's one thing that I actually do appreciate about gas companies. Like they did not care. No bad ideas in brainstorming. Like, If you can dream it, we can do it.

Greg Dalton: I'm seeing mad men sitting around with their cocktails.

Rollie Williams: It's even like crustier than that. It's like dudes who rolled in, hung over and are trying to get out by two that day to pick up their kid. You know, it's like, it's like, uh, what if we have a guy who's like trying to take a shower, but he opens the shower and there's like a Chinese guy in his shower and they're like, Gary, that's a genius idea. That's the ad now. And like, that's literally an ad that they did. Um, and it, it, it, it's, it's all based around the idea that like gas is good. Gas is fast. Electricity doesn't work and it does work, but it's expensive. And like, it's just so fun to like go back to these ads, but the best gas. Piece of media out there, I think is the, rapping with gas. It's that hook cooking with gas. They have the hook cooking with gas dozens of times, and then they name the song rapping with gas because they forgot the hook of the song.It's all insane, but it's these gas utilities that are just sort of trying to promote the idea of like, oh, hey, gas stoves, don't you love a gas stove? Gas stoves are great, and part of the reason why they're trying to promote this despite gas stoves being like, 5 percent of any given household's gas usage, which is like the smallest fraction. It's mostly, uh, heating and cooling. But the fact that people have a relationship with their gas stove. So these gas companies know that if they can keep that relationship alive, the relationship people have to their gas stoves, then they've got an in, their gas line's already going into the house, it's much easier for them to accommodate a gas furnace or something like that.

Greg Dalton: Right. People don't see the blue flame in their furnace or their water here. They see the blue flame cooking their eggs and they romanticize it. And it shows you how effective that campaign was because cooking with gas is sort of infused in our culture. Now they're updating their tactics with social media. So what are they doing now? Because gas stoves have been dragged into the culture wars. How's the industry using social media to respond?

Rollie Williams: Yeah. I mean, they're seeing that influencer marketing is effective in other walks of life. And so they're reaching out to influencers and asking them to kind of promote the concept of gas stoves. And, and it's not like, Hey, this is a Michelson's Gas Stoves on central street in Maine. It's like, don't forget we cook on gas stoves just to sort of keep the idea of gas stoves in people's brains. Like without even really just the idea that gas stoves still exist. Is enough for them to say, uh, influencer marketing campaign might be helpful in proliferating gas stoves in people's houses. And the fact is, like, gas stoves are a huge contributor to childhood asthma. Uh, it's an open flame in your house, you know, it's like not a safe thing and, and it is a, like constantly leaks, like methane leaks are a huge problem.

Greg Dalton: Benzene, which is, yeah, benzene, which is a carcinogen. So are you dragged into the culture wars because you've taken on gas in homes?

Rollie Williams: I'm not dragged into a culture war because I kind of just like put the video out and then I'm I I clap my hands like a blackjack dealer leaving his shift and I just walk out like that's my I don't think you know, I think a lot of talking heads on fox news and MSNBC kind of want that because there's a 24 hour news cycle and all they want to do is talk about whatever the culture war is. And I just make like one video a month and a podcast or two a month and like, that's my, that's my output.

Greg Dalton: And you have hundreds of thousands of views. Some of your videos are viewed on Climate Town over a million times.

Rollie Williams: What? How do you? What if I, what if I didn't know? I was like, Oh my God!

Greg Dalton: Congratulations!

Rollie Williams: Jeez! I gotta call my mom!

Greg Dalton: How do you measure your impact, other than your mom being proud of you, um, how do you measure your impact?

Rollie Williams: Well, it is, number one, is my mom proud of me. I'm glad you picked up on that. Judy Williams, shout out one time Judy Williams, Dick Williams is my dad, Marnie Williams is my sister. They're all, I think they're all proud of me. Um, I kind of measure my impact in, like, how many comments I get that are about people telling me they're, like, going back to grad school to study sustainability or renewable energy or something. How many, and which is, I'm not, not to say that it's, like, a million comments like that. My impact is, like, how are people, like, changing their behavior? and changing what they're doing based on new information that I learned thought was important and so I put into a video. Um, and it's, it's a little bit of an imperfect science because, uh, they don't always comment or like find me on the street and say like, hey man, thanks for doing those videos. I just enrolled at, uh, you know, Evergreen University in forestry management or something. Um, but when I hear that, it's like, oh, this is, you know, something's working, something's clicking with people.

Greg Dalton: Yeah. It's one thing to change a cooktop, you know, your induction cooktop or a heat pump or electric water heater or something like that. It's a whole nother thing to change your career. What do you think that comedy can do that other forms of communication can't?

Rollie Williams: Yeah, I think there's some scholarship, uh, around this, but mostly, you know, this is information. These are facts for the most part, and they're not always like fun to intake, you know, I think I was thinking about this the other day. Your TikTok feed is not people reading from a textbook at you. Your TikTok feed is not just like stats. It is people. You know, uh, people putting together a log cabin it really fast or people creating a new lightsaber out of parts or something like these are, these are interesting ways to integrate information and that is the new premium of entertainment and I don't know how to build a lightsaber or a log cabin so I've got a comedy. That's kind of my angle. I also think there's sort of a bit of a guard people have at all times just because of how, I mean, I'm going to be the first to say this: America is more polarized than ever. Um, but you know, people are, people are polarized. They're ready to, to see something political and just turn their brain off if they don't agree with it or like take the information in if they do. I think comedy maybe allows people a couple of extra seconds of watch time before they decide how they feel about it. And if I convince them early enough to keep watching, regardless of their political affiliation, they'll sometimes, uh, watch the rest of it and then change their opinion.

Greg Dalton: Climate is a difficult conversation. It's often not approachable as we've talked about. People kind of steer clear of it. Uh, it can be heavy to think about the research once you really dive into the numbers and the graphs, as you did at Columbia for your your work, uh, what is, you know, how do you handle the personal load of, how do you handle the personal weight of knowing what you know about the science? And does comedy, you know, give you relief and escape from that?

Rollie Williams: Yeah. You know, I think I had this conversation with Emily Atkin a couple of years ago, who's got a great newsletter called heated. Definitely go subscribe to that. It's fantastic. If you're working on a problem, I think it alleviates some of the anxiety you feel about that problem. So I think getting to come in every day and all day research and call experts and cross check evidence and call other experts and put scripts together, this sort of alleviates some of the anxious feeling that I used to have about climate change. And I think you actually get that same alleviation if you are getting involved in a local level, if you are, you know, starting an organization or better yet joining an existing organization, or if you're working on, uh, you know, letter writing campaigns or protesting, it actually helps change your, your emotional stress load if you're actually out there doing something about it.

Greg Dalton: Right, and it sounds like you're saying that the comedy can also even a sort of gallows humor can also provide some relief. So if i'm walking along the San Francisco bay and I say well in a few years we'll need to have you know gaiters on here to be walking here of some kind of you know, uh, sea level rise joke that's okay? Like sometimes I feel a little icky making climate jokes because it's not so funny….?

Rollie Williams: Yeah, I think the general thought is like, Oh, it's all gallows humor because it's a depressing subject, but I've kind of found like, that's not that effective of a tool for me personally, it might work really well for you and, and especially it sounded like it had a little bit of a physical comedy element to it when you're walking along and you could maybe You know, really, really lean into the sell the gaiters on the legs thing–

Greg Dalton: But I don't, I don't find it funny though. I guess I, I guess I'm not as funny as you are, which is why you do what you do and I do what I do, but it's, I have, I have a difficulty finding humor around climate when so many people are suffering. And, and, um, you know, I don't know that there are some places obviously more human that it's humorous, more so than, you know, I don't know, making fun at EVs or making fun at windmills, that's okay. If it's not kind of a human.

Rollie Williams: Yeah, I think, you watch any great standup set and it's about their pain, not their joy, you know, like comedians are able to alchemize these awful moments and create moments of levity out of them. I'm not on their level, you know, like I'm not a, uh, Eddie Murphy or, you know, I'm not a Donald Glover or something, but I am trying to make make levity out of understanding a topic deeply enough and finding moments that are ironic or getting sarcastic about a thing that somebody that I don't that that is acting facetiously said it's like it's kind of about punching up and I think gallows humor actually weirdly tends to be about punching down where you're sort of you're sort of giving up or capitulating to an inevitable future that I don't really think you need to capitulate to. So I think once you, once you really get into the research and start uncovering some of these documents and some of this evidence, jokes kind of naturally, organically spring out of them that aren't at the expense of the human capital.

Greg Dalton: Rollie Williams of Climate Town. Thanks for coming on Climate One.

Rollie Williams: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Ariana Brocious: Part of writing and creating good comedy is knowing what makes it work. For that we turn to Caty Borum, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Social Impact and Provost Associate Professor at American University.

Greg: Her career has included work in strategic communications and documentary films, and now she’s focused on studying the underpinnings of comedy for social justice.

Ariana: She explains what makes comedy an effective form of communication, one that helps us remember information better than other means.

Caty Borum: When a joke is funny, and particularly a joke about a serious civic, public health, or social issue, you actually have to boil down a whole bunch of factual information, a whole pile of facts, say, or like the reality of something, and you have to boil it down into a kind of cultural reality that is recognizable to an audience. And then the joke, the punchline is turning that situation into a different way of seeing it. So really it's the incongruity of the situation. So to actually make the joke funny in the first place, you actually can't wade around in the complexity of that issue. And that's what usually loses us in terms of our attention, right?

Ariana Brocious: So comedy requires a level of simplification that helps people digest and retain the information, is what you're saying.

Caty Borum: I think it's translation, but I think it's a lot. It's also establishing cultural commonality and cultural context. It's saying that, listen, you and I may actually both not understand this thing or maybe we don't agree about it. But here's a really simple way to think about it and to find some contextual cultural commonality where we can at least start from a place where we both recognize what I'm saying, right? And the reason that is especially valuable when it comes to the climate crisis is because it is heavily science based and many, many people either don't understand the climate science or at this stage of the movement are definitely not going to admit that out loud because they might sound stupid. But if a good joke or a set can kind of bring you into something and at least spark your interest and maybe you go look it up or maybe you say out loud, I didn't know that thing, That can all be really helpful, kind of admitting that we don't know.

Ariana Brocious: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, this idea that first you have to find a place of common understanding that's helpful, and I think you're right that there are people who don't want to admit not knowing the intricacies of climate, which can be pretty wonky, I would like to play a clip now that I think exemplifies both some of the success of a good bit, but also the overwhelming in my mind, the overwhelming preponderance of common experience that's tied to environment or climate that people can relate to. This is Marc Maron.

MARC MARON: Certainly it's been ending environmentally for a long time, and we've all kind of known it, we knew it. But I think on a deeper level, the reason we're not more upset about the world ending environmentally, is I think, you know, all of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could. You know, we really, right? I mean, we really did. I mean, think about it. We, you know, we... We brought our own bags To the supermarket. Yeah, that's about it.

Ariana Brocious: It's, it's so on point, right? So it's getting to what you're talking about. Help us having just heard that help us understand why that's effective.

Caty Borum: Marc Maron is hilarious actually, so you, you picked a good one for, to play for me. There are a couple of different things going on. So first, if you notice, he gets the laugh before he even gets to the punchline because the cultural commonality is so obviously established. The cultural commonality is we're not more upset because we really all knew that we just did everything. I mean, it's kind of amazing. That you can hear audible laughter at that point because everyone is like, Oh, we definitely all know that's a bunch of bulls***. Right? So, um, so he's establishing that commonality. But then he's pointing out kind of one of the big lies that we've been sold, you know, the idea that only individual behavior is going to get out of the climate crisis. And of course, we know from decades of science that that's not correct. And then he's a little bit doing a little bit of gentle public shaming like we might walk out of that and say, you know, we're not really doing very much right we in our individual house or whatever. But he's also doing a pretty good setup for the fact that actually it's giant companies that need to change entire ways of being and doing. Certainly our consumption matters and all of that, so yes, individual behavior. But he's doing a pretty good setup for the fact that actually this is a really big structural issue with a great deal of institutional responsibility that, yes, we need to participate in, but even if you and I, Ariana, completely use our recyclable Whole Foods bags only, that's not the same thing as completely divesting of fossil fuels and a number of other structural changes that need to be made.

Ariana Brocious: Right. And this idea of structural issues is one I want to explore because some of your work has dealt with other big, , difficult matters that we're struggling with as a society. And so we've talked a bit about climate. We'll talk more about climate, but how has comedy handled other social issues effectively and what lessons maybe could we take from that and then apply to climate comedy?

Caty Borum: So comedy does lots of things, including allowing us to talk about taboo issues that sometimes otherwise cannot really be addressed. This one I actually think is particularly important when we're talking about really tricky public health and, uh, issues of poverty, the kind of frame shifting that can be meaningful in that work is really valuable. Comedy attracts attention, comedy is much more likely to be shared, comedy has to what we think of as a sleeper effect, which is a term that comes from psychology, which basically means that, for a couple of different reasons, we actually hold on to messages when they're delivered through comedy a little bit more easily than, you know, more serious forms of delivery. So if it gets people to shine a little flashlight into their own thinking and put a little crack in our kind of what we think of as our really rote understanding of really the social construct, construction of social issues and what we do about them, that's actually really valuable because when you think about social justice writ large, it requires us to move beyond the status quo about how issues have been told to us. How they have been shaped for us by narrative, by lots of different actors doing that work. Social justice really requires us to be bold enough to see that there is another way of looking actually, and thereby perhaps some radical ways of solving problems or seemingly radical because we just haven't seen them before. And I think comedy is valuable in all of that because it is so deviant, because comedy comes in and dares to make something really funny or playful about something that might be otherwise difficult for us to understand or perhaps too painful for us to talk about.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, it may seem strange to laugh about something as scary and huge as the climate crisis. But Caty Borum says it’s necessary:

Caty Borum: If we don't allow some way to build up our resilience and catharsis and let in little slivers of light and hope, and my most favorite: play. How will we have the energy to keep going?

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Let’s get back to Ariana’s conversation with Caty Borum of American University.

Ariana Brocious: In keeping with the sort of, um, strategies behind joke telling, how important is a joke's point of view in order for it to be an effective agent of change? So for example, say someone's telling a joke about climate deniers. Is that likely to prompt someone who's a climate denier to feel differently about it?

Caty Borum: I work with many, many comedians. I also produce a lot of comedy in relationship with and collaboration with human rights organizations and, um, also run other programs that really are designed to work with comedians who are telling stories and creating comedy about things that matter. So I'm a really, really big fan and proponent of artistic freedom and creative freedom just in general. But that said, when you are doing comedy about issues that really, really need our attention for lots of different reasons, I do think it is important that creative people are well versed in the topics. You have to do some research or talk to some people, go out of your way to really learn about it. So the climate deniers example is a really good one, because as we know, over the decades, the idea that some people and politicians deny climate science is real. We know that has become a really effective political lever. It is partisan with a capital P. It is such an effective tool of political warfare that we almost can't even see past it, right? So, it still, however, does not describe the majority of public opinion. And of course, public opinion is a beautiful thing because it does shift over time. So 20 years ago, I'm sure this was not the case, but we know from public opinion data from Yale and Pew and other sources, that the broad majority, at least of American people, now believe that climate change is real and that it is at least partially caused by human behavior, human action.

Ariana Brocious: And that we should do something about it.

Caty Borum: Exactly right. So going back to your point, if we then decide to make a series of jokes about climate change denial, First of all, that's actually not even helpful because that's not where the issue is anymore, we might find it funny if we're like sort of smugly. Calling climate change deniers idiots or whatever, we might privately think that's a pretty funny joke, but I would say if we actually really care about this issue, it's not terribly responsible, right? So what happens that we know from other scholars research, that when we message and do comedy on climate change denial. What we actually do is just send people deeper into their ideological camps and, and, and sort of encourage them to hold on to those beliefs even stronger. I'm not really sure, um, the utility of that. And it's not to say, comedy, by the way, should not be burdened with the utility of the humor. Comedians should be funny first. But if you're going to do climate change comedy, you should at least... Not want to do harm, right?

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and I think, I mean, elsewhere in this episode, we talk with Rollie Williams, who I would say is trying to do both simultaneously. He wants to be funny. That's his tool and his platform, but his goal is climate information and, you know, getting people kind of more engaged. So I'm hearing from you is that it really matters to be smart about how sketches or bits are written and meeting people in the moment we're in the cultural moment, as you've been saying. Let's hear another bit of climate comedy from comedian Michelle Wolfe.

MICHELLE WOLFE: Climate change, it is a real big deal. And everyone says Mother Nature. And I do believe nature is a woman, because she’s trying to kill us in the most passive aggressive way possible. It’s not some sort of immediate fire or flood or a cool explosion, she’s just like, “what? I raised the temperature a little.” Are you uncomfortable? Well maybe I wouldn’t have if you’d taken out the recycling like I asked! I’m fine.

Ariana Brocious: So another really funny bit, though, I have to say, I'm, uh, I think classifying all women as passive aggressive doesn't, doesn't meet my, uh,

Caty Borum: Right? Uh oh.

Ariana Brocious: opinion. No, but I, but I want to talk about what makes this effective, too, because I think it's really helpful to have you unpack something, you know, so we can, um, jump in and say, well, yeah, we know that the, the, there's the temperature bit, but I'll let you do the work of helping us understand why we think this is funny.

Caty Borum: So that's a funny joke, and we're going to remember it, right? Because she's playing on, first of all, shared cultural competence. I do agree with you, Ariana, I'm not sure all women are passive aggressive, but she's making, actually, the unspoken point that the kind of, you know, Uh, cartoonishly masculine is also not great, which is like, I'm just gonna blowtorch you, right? I mean, that's also not true, right?

Ariana Brocious: Right, and she's poking fun at, like, the cultural idea of woman ness, right?

Caty Borum: Yes. And she is still pointing out that the absurdity of at without talking about climate change denial in the joke of we were going to do real quick rhetorical analysis of this semiotic analysis or whatever we would say, look, she is actually reminding us a little bit about the science of climate change, which is for everyone who says, You know what? I don't know what you're talking about. It's colder than it's ever been in my neighborhood. To point out that the gradual shifts are actually not the same thing. She is reminding us that the, uh, that the science, what we know is the gradual shifts that actually are happening much more quickly. So I like that she uses the funny gender cues and it's important to also say, look, to be big, good comedy fans, we do have to always be willing to laugh at ourselves a little bit. So I would definitely agree that not all women are passive aggressive. I've worked with plenty of men who are passive aggressive, but it is funny. And like, there's enough cultural context where we understand why we should be laughing. If we are the women as the butt of the joke there, hopefully we can laugh at ourselves a little bit in her new special, by the way, she makes a lot of really funny jokes about, um, white women responding to crises. And, uh, I'll just name that I am a white lady and I found those jokes hilarious and, uh, kind of true. So…

Ariana Brocious: I think that's some of the most effective right when it really gets you and you feel seen and also a little criticized, but it's it's it's a good sort of like, Oh, right. Yeah.

Caty Borum: Yes.

Ariana Brocious: When doing research for this episode, it seemed that there isn't actually a large body of climate comedy. So why do you think that is? Why is climate maybe a topic that a lot of comedians stay away from?

Caty Borum: I think the really obvious answer is that it is so technologically difficult, and I think it can be really hard to find a way in comedically unless you're doing what I would call the tired old jokes of climate change denialism, which there are plenty of jokes about that, but I just think that's too easy, right? Not only is it not effective, It's just, it's like maybe not helping at all. Right. So I think it's just technocratic. And I think that also a lot of climate change messaging for many decades, hasn't really talked about humans as much as some of the science. I mean, the real hard science, the numbers, the environmental issues, of course, all of that.

Ariana Brocious: It’s been like polar bears maybe or ice cap.

Caty Borum: Exactly. And so, you know, we're hoping to change that a little bit with our climate comedy cohort, which is really talking a great deal about things like clean energy solutions and trying to encourage people to kind of adopt different behaviors along those lines. The other thing that I would say, When you think about communities of people, professional communities. So let's think about climate scientists on the one hand, let's imagine them, right? And comedians on the other hand, yes. These don't feel like groups of people that hang out together, right? How would they meet one another and exchange tools of their trade? Like, how do you do what you do? No, how do you do what you do? So when it comes to sheer knowing one another, if I was just an emerging comedian, how would you even know as a comedian how to access a climate scientist to actually get enough information that really makes sense to you so that you can create comedy out of it? So actually one of the major interventions here, and this is what we're doing with our climate comedy cohort, an actually really simple intervention, but a really thoughtful and meaningful one is actually bringing those communities together so that they can genuinely learn from one another. Simply putting communities together that actually work wildly differently is actually really, really important and I don't think that we think about that enough.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. I think that's an excellent point because it goes back to this idea of having to have enough understanding both of the performer and then the audience to be able to grasp what's the funny thing, right? the climate crisis has very real, very deadly consequences that we're beginning to experience increasingly with increasing frequency. But we have this history of using comedy to get through difficult times and difficult issues. So why is it important to find humor in something so serious and heavy?

Caty Borum: In one piece of research that we did, Lauren Feldman and I for our first book, we interviewed a lot of people in social issue work, including climate change, the people who actually were working with comedy about really daunting issues, including, for example, gun violence. Really, really talk about the terribly traumatic, painful issue. And we said to them, more or less, when you choose to work with comedy, why do you do it? Your issue is so hard. And what we heard over and over again was not only do people need hope, but people need a reason to keep mobilizing in the face of daunting odds. We know this from a really intuitive place, all of us do, that do work like this. We understand that because we all find a way to keep going with social issues that are hard. Those of us that really work in it. But if we don't allow some way to build up our resilience and catharsis and let in little slivers of light and hope, and my most favorite play. How will we have the energy to keep going? So the same is true when we're talking about public engagement and social challenges. We need comedy and play desperately, and we should honor and respect its place in that work as not luxury or extra, but as actually essential.

Ariana Brocious: Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media and Social Impact and Provost Associate Professor at American University. She's also author of The Revolution Will Be Hilarious, Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power. Caty, thank you so much for joining us for this great conversation on Climate One.

Caty Borum: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Greg Dalton: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend.

Ariana Brocious: Greg Dalton is host and executive producer. Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young and arranged by Matt Willcox. Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Ariana Brocious.

3:30 Rollie Williams’s start in climate comedy
6:50 Public appetite for climate comedy
9:15 Satirizing BP carbon footprint ads
14:00 Keith McCoy of Exxon admitting to fighting climate science
19:30 The problem with parking in America
23:30 Cooking with gas rap and social media campaign
30:15 How comedy can provide relief from anxiety or despair
35:30 Caty Borum on what makes a joke funny
40:00 Why comedy allows us to talk about taboo topics
44:00 Comedians need climate science background to make things funny
54:00 Comedy allows for catharsis, play and hope

Play

Jane Fonda: A Lifetime of Activism

BenTestani — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 21:27:35 +0000

Jane Fonda: A Lifetime of Activism

09/29/2023

Visionary Guests

Jane Fonda has been many things: an actor, fitness guru, and mother, but through it all, her activism has remained her true calling. For decades she’s been a passionate critic of the Vietnam War and supporter of Indigenous, LGBTQ and women’s rights.

Inspired by Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg, in 2019 she began protesting on the steps of the U.S. capitol in an action she called “Fire Drill Fridays” – to bring awareness to the urgency of the climate crisis.

“A majority of Americans, like 70%, are very concerned about the climate. But they haven't taken action. And they say because they haven't been asked. This is our job now. To reach the great unasked,” she says.

Fonda has empathy for fossil fuel workers and plenty of rage for fossil fuel executives.

“They knew 40 years ago that what they were burning was going to destroy the planet. They knew and they didn't stop drilling,” she says. Fonda has also launched a climate PAC with the goal of defeating political allies of the fossil fuel industry.

“That's all we focus on, is getting out the oily electors, especially the Democrats, and we primary them strategically. And we want to get climate champions elected to office, up and down the ballot. Because right now, you can't get much done in Congress right now. But down ballots, state legislatures, city councils, supervisors, controllers, they have such power, you have no idea how much influence they could have over this climate crisis.”
Over a lifetime of activism, she’s realized the power of taking a stand and speaking out for what she believes in, as well as fighting for those with less privilege.

“I have found that every single time I start to get depressed, if I take action it disappears. Greta Thunberg said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And she's right.”

Guests

Jane Fonda

Activist and Actor

Fire Drill Fridays (firedrillfridays.org)

Jane Fonda in Five Acts (hbo.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One, I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: I am so excited about today’s guest: the incredible Jane Fonda. Jane has been many things: an actor, fitness guru, and mother, but through it all, her activism has remained her true calling.

Jane Fonda: And I have found that every single time I start to get depressed, if I take action it disappears.

Ariana Brocious:The passionate critic of the Vietnam War and supporter of Indigenous rights has empathy for fossil fuel workers and plenty of rage for fossil fuel executives.

Jane Fonda: They knew 40 years ago that what they were burning was going to destroy the planet. They knew and they didn't stop drilling.

Greg Dalton: I loved her show Grace and Frankie. And I’ve been aware of her activism for decades but it was when she turned to climate that I really started paying attention.

Ariana Brocious: And though, Greg, you and I are of slightly different generations, I loved also Grace and Frankie. I thought it was a hilarious show. I started to notice Jane through her fitness empire as many of us did. But really I began paying attention to her when she began her climate protests. This began back in 2019. Jane was inspired by Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg, and she began protesting on the steps of the U.S. capitol in an action she called “Fire Drill Fridays” – to bring awareness to the urgency of the climate crisis.

Jane Fonda: A majority of Americans, like 70%, are very concerned about the climate. But they haven't taken action. And they say because they haven't been asked. This is our job now. To reach the great unasked.

Greg Dalton: She got a lot of attention because she’s a famous person; she brought a lot of her famous buddies along and they quickly turned to mic to people of color, younger people, who don’t have as much fame and power. What I was most excited to talk with her about was her life journey, her craft and her values. And what really resonated with me was her ability to hold conflicting and complicated emotions at the same time - rage at fossil fuel executives for their deceit, and genuine empathy for rank and file workers in the oil and gas industry. We rarely hear those two things in the climate conversation.

Ariana Brocious: Yes. Though we could probably stand to have more of that. I was also moved by her reflection on discovering of her own privilege and how that inspired her to take action and be involved in those causes.

Greg Dalton: Elites are sometimes reluctant to get involved in social change because they have a lot to protect and a lot to lose. I vividly recall when Michael Brune, then-head of the Sierra Club, got arrested in front of the White House. He did that after the Sierra Club ended a 120-year-old ban on employees engaging in civil disobedience. And since that time I have wondered how bad and desperate the climate needs to get before I cross a line that puts at risk things I hold dear. I don’t know where that line is, but I do respect people who have done that, scientists and others, who put their careers and bodies on the line. I do know we’re not gonna solve the climate crisis by elites remaining very comfortable and cautious and safe.

Ariana Brocious: Jane Fonda was recently in San Francisco and joined you for a conversation recorded in front of a live audience at the Herbst Theater. And this is a special place, right Greg?

Greg Dalton: Right. I talked with Jane on the same stage where the UN charter was signed in 1945. That’s meaningful to me because it reflects a powerful moment in history when great powers came together to address collective interests and support peace. And of course, the UN is central to addressing the climate crisis.

Greg Dalton: Around that time when the UN charter is being signed here, you were a school child growing up. And your home was not a happy place. Your father, Henry Fonda, played many iconic roles, including Abe Lincoln. And you said that you grew up in the shadow of a national monument. Your mother struggled with mental health and you found solace outdoors, climbing trees, getting to know the bugs and creatures in nature. How did that connection with the natural world shape you and who you are today?

Jane Fonda: Finding solace in nature when you're a young child, you know, if it's not a happy home…there's always the trees and the flowers, and my desire growing up was, I wanted to be a, I didn't know the word Indigenous, I wanted to be an Indian boy. Sometimes I wanted to be the Lone Ranger, sometimes I wanted to be Tonto, yeah. Because of the way they were with nature. The symbiotic relationship, the knowledge that you were part of nature, that nature was a living thing that you were part of. And I grew up at the end of a dirt road, up on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. There were no other houses anywhere. And there were bobcats and mountain lions and coyotes and... meadowlarks and, you know, if you have loved these things as a child and then they're not there anymore. I mean, where are the meadowlarks? Do you know that there are three billion fewer birds now than we had in 1970. And if you're like me, I loved bird songs. That leaves a hole in your soul, you know, and every summer I spent all my time in the ocean at the Santa Monica Bay. And you can't go swimming there now. And then whales are washing up dead. And we know why. But I love whales. I scuba dive with penguins and marine iguanas and sea turtles and when you've been face to face with a sea turtle, no really, and you look into those eyes. You know that you're part of that. And I'm sure that all of you saw “My Octopus Teacher.” Which I've seen about five times. Right? Yeah. I mean, they're sentient creatures. And I just kind of knew that intuitively as a child. And so I always cared.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, that you're part of nature. It's not something to dominate or extract resources from. You reveal a lot about your feelings and your relationship with your parents, food, your body, in a fabulous HBO documentary that I highly recommend called Jane Fonda In Five Acts, and it's fabulous, fabulous. It's amazing how much you reveal. So vulnerable, and what an amazing, amazing story. And in that, I learned that in 1968, you were living in Paris, and your mentor, Simone Signoret, a member of France's intellectual left, invited you to a large protest against the Vietnam War. And you write in your memoir that, “For the first time, I felt embarrassed for my country. I also wanted to go home.” So, take us to that moment when you went to your first protest. I'm not sure you could even find Vietnam on a map at that point. What powerful awakening was that for you?

Jane Fonda: Well, my father was a decorated Navy officer in the second world war, and it was a very important time for him. And I just grew up assuming that any place that U.S. troops were fighting, we were on the side of the angels. We all want to feel that we have meaning in our lives, you know, we all want to be able to say, why am I here, and I know that there's a reason, and, boy, I was so far, I didn't even know I was supposed to ask myself things like that. Anyway. I fell in love with a Frenchman, and I moved there, a director, and he directed Barbarella, and been married to Bardot and Deneuve before me. I mean, it was complicated. And, I remember, I remember very well, we were in Saint Tropez, and it was when Johnson started bombing North Vietnam. And, it was in the headlines of the paper, and my husband, Vadim, looked at that and he said, you know, [speaks in French]. He could not believe that our elected officials were so stupid as to believe what they were being told and to go ahead and permit this to happen. And I thought, well, who the hell does he think he is? Sour Grapes, just cause you all lost. I didn't say this out loud. But, you know, the French had colonized Vietnam and the Vietnamese had beat them, too. And, so I just thought it was sour grapes. I really didn't know, I didn't know where Vietnam was. And Simone Signoret had kind of had a crush on my dad. And so when I went to France to make a movie, she, being the elder she was, took me under her wing. We ate meals together a lot, and that's where I learned that the French eat forever and drink wine forever into the night, and it was so great. Anyway, she used to bring me to anti war demonstrations where Simone de Beauvoir was speaking, and Camus was speaking, and Sartre, and it was, it was, Interesting. I didn't understand any of it, really. And then in 1968, I was extremely pregnant, and American soldiers who had fought in Vietnam and then left, deserted, resisted, came to Paris, and Calder. That's whose home they stayed in, but they didn't have clothes, and so they were in dentists and doctors, and so they would look for compatriots who lived there to help them, and so a group of them sought me out, and I said, well, why did you leave? What's going on? And they told me stories about how American troops were treating civilian soldiers, and I didn't believe them. I could not believe in... They gave me a book by Jonathan Schell called The Village of Ben Suc. It was a small book and I read it in one sitting. And when I finished that book, I was a different person. It was a book about how the government had requested that civilians be rounded up and put in these kind of stockades. I determined right then that I was going to, I couldn't stay in France. I didn't want to be criticizing my country in another country. That I had to go home. And I left my family and I came back. And so the first people I went to, to know what to do, were GIs. I became part of the GI movement, which was... active duty soldiers, and sailors, and marines, and air force, I mean, it was all branches of the military. And outside a lot of the bases, there were these coffee shops that had been created by anti war activists as places where soldiers could come to learn about Vietnam, to learn the history, and, and things like that. And there was one called the Oleo Strut outside of Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. It was one of the first coffee shops, coffee houses that I went to and what really did it for me was a woman named Terry Davis. It was always the women that I met who were part of the anti war movement. You know, I had never met people like that. I knew so many friggin rich people. I can't tell you. I mean, people who ran countries and huge corporations. And I'd seen all of the wealth in the world. And smart people and stuff. But this woman to me epitomized what took over my soul. Her name was Terry Davis. And she didn't treat me like a celebrity. She saw me. I was supposed to lead a rally in the following week with soldiers that were going to come. She wanted to be sure I felt okay about it, what I was going to say, she, being with her was like looking through a keyhole at the world that we were fighting for. It was like getting into a warm bath. And I realized, there's a lot of these people in the world that are totally different then the people that I've grown up with. I want to be like them. They were all women. It was a profound, soul altering experience for me.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, how Jane Fonda became inspired to direct her activism toward climate:

Jane Fonda: Greta Thunberg said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And she's right.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. In addition to her work with military veterans, Jane Fonda became a supporter of Indigenous rights. Let’s get back to my conversation with the activist and actor recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco.

Greg Dalton: In 1972, Tom Hayden wrote a book called, “Love of Possession is a Disease with Them.” What about that book captured your mind?

Jane Fonda: How can I even describe this? I wanted to be an indigenous boy. Because I could gallop, full speed, bareback, on a horse through an avocado grove and did all the time. I mean, because I was like an Indian. I mean, that's what I really did. and then...Well, just one little, God, I hope I don't talk too much.

Greg Dalton: Not at all. That's why we're here.

Jane Fonda: Between reading the book, between reading this book by Jonathan Schell, and having my life turned inside out, and then giving birth to my first child. And then everybody was going, everybody, the Beatles and Mia Farrow were going to India to find truth. So, I wanted to find truth. So, I went to India by myself, and I trekked all through India, and Nepal, and Sikkim, the place was full of Americans in saffron robes like they were, you know, Buddhists and they were getting stoned and they were telling you, here's a joint and, you know, come to the ashram and I had never been in the third world before. I had never seen abject poverty before and I was just like, holy s***. I don't want to go to an ashram, I want to join the Peace Corps. And that's where I realized that, oh, oh, I want to do something about this. Anyway, I flew from there, this is right after I made They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Flew to Beverly Hills for a press conference to promote the film. I remember I woke up the next morning and looked out the window and thought there's been a plague. Because I had spent two weeks in India where noise and smell and sounds and this was quiet. I thought something has happened. There's been a plague. But, as I got off the plane, you remember Ramparts Magazine? It was on the stands and on the cover was a Native American woman, Lineta Means. She became my friend later and she was holding up her fist. And behind her was a whitewashed brick wall that said, Better Red Than Dead. So I bought it. I'd never bought Ramparts before. And it was an article by Peter Collier. He's since become, like, Tucker Carlson, he's become a right winger, but it was a great article about the history of what white settlers had done to Native Americans in this country. My father had done all these movies, and I had never known this history, I'm ashamed to say. And I thought to myself, why did I go to India? And I called Peter Collier, and I said, I want to go to Alcatraz. It was an article, it was motivated by the occupation of Alcatraz, by the indigenous students in Berkeley. And I went. Peter Collier brought me there. And that, and, and that was kind of like the first thing that I, that I, what was the question? Really, I'm, I'm sorry.

Greg Dalton: When you read Love of Possession as it–

Jane Fonda: Oh yeah, so, so, I, it was like, there was the war and then there was this war that we'd waged against indigenous people here And, and it seemed similar. And then I heard that this guy, Tom Hayden, had written this book, “The Love of Possession is a Disease With Them,” a quote from, I think, Black Elk. And, I knew I was going to marry him. I did. And I did. But mostly because the first date we had, I gave a slideshow in downtown Los Angeles, and it was all about the kind of bombs we were dropping, which were illegal. The same ones we're giving to Ukraine right now, by the way, cluster bombs and things like that. So, I was trying to show, because Nixon was trying to persuade people that the war was winding down because he was bringing home the ground troops, but in fact it was escalating the war, and so I was talking about that air war. It was all facts and figures and stuff like that, and this guy shows up. It was Tom, and he had black rubber sandals. The kind that the Vietnamese made out of American airplane tires. Just saying. And he had a beaded headband, and he had a braid down to his waist, and of course I knew I was going to marry him. And he saw my slideshow, and then he said, can I show you mine? And I went home and I said to my roommate, I've just met the man I'm going to marry, and he came over the next day and he showed me his slideshow. And this is what is important about somebody like Tom Hayden. It mentioned the bombing and everything. But it was about the Vietnamese people. It was about what we were destroying when we bombed these villages and destroyed these rice paddies. It was about the fact that the Vietnamese had been fighting for thousands of years against the Chinese, and the Mongols, and the French, and the Japanese, and they had always won. And he talked about why that was probably so. Great legends of strong sisters. He talked about the women who are now, there. He showed a slide show, a slide of an advertisement by a plastic surgeon to make their slanted eyes more like western eyes. And that, and breast implants, which I had had. And so when I realized what, what we were doing, not just the bombing and the killing, but the destruction of that ancient Buddhist culture, so of course I married him. I mean, and it, again, it changed, it changed how I viewed the war, how I viewed the Vietnamese, and it was the framework that undergirded me when I went there a few months later.

Greg Dalton: So the connection, the affinity with indigenous people started very young. You connected that with sort of the bombing of Vietnam, the decimation of indigenous cultures.

Jane Fonda: Can I just interrupt once? I just want to say something because I don't want to give the impression that I was not an activist until Tom came along. Because what ended up happening was... I created a show called FTA, f*** the Army, based on G. I. magazines. The coffee houses got the G. I.s to print magazines, and that was the name of one of their magazines. And it was a counter to the Bob Hope show. Bob Hope, who said in one of his shows, Oh, bombing of North Vietnam, it's the greatest slum clearance program we've ever had. I mean, you know. So, we, a bunch of us went over there, Donald Sutherland and, and, and Michael Alimo and Rita Martinson and Len Chandler who, rest in peace, just died a few days ago. And we performed to 60,000 soldiers in the Philippines and Hawaii and Japan and Okinawa. An anti war show. It was great. And I thought that that was a pretty cool thing. It turns out that the thing that worried Nixon the most about the anti war movement was the G. I. movement. That was what obsessed him. He was so worried about it.

Greg Dalton: Very credible messengers that are not coastal hippies, yeah, those different messengers. On Thanksgiving Day in 2016, you went to Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. Candy Mossett, a 37 year old member of the Mondan, Hidatsa, and Akira Nation was quoted in the Guardian as saying, “What's the narrative here? Oh, we want to help the poor Indians on Thanksgiving of all days. We're trying to make people understand we don't need celebrities to come and feed us and get a photo op and just leave.” How does it feel to hear those words now?

Jane Fonda: It’s fine, it wasn't referring to me. What I brought was 15,000 pounds of bison and yurts, because it was very, very cold. It happened that another person that I know brought a lot of turkeys and roasted them. It was kind of fun, the way it was done. And I helped serve them, but no, I went there with yurts and bison meat. And the courage that they were showing was enormous, but the thing that made me the happiest to see, when I was, when I was at Alcatraz, there was a real schism. There were those, um, American Indian Movement wanted to assimilate, they, you know, they wanted to leave behind the ceremonies and all of that, if I understand correctly. And then there were those who, you know, like Thomas Banyaka, the Hopi spiritual leader, was there. It was the first time that Wilma Mankiller had met a spiritual guide. And, and, there were those who were saying, no, we need the prayers and the sweat lodges and so forth. And when I got to Standing Rock, it was the prayers and ceremonies and sweat lodges that had won out. There were so many young people who said that those ceremonies had helped them kick booze and drugs and they were very into it and that's a really good thing. I think.

Greg Dalton: I don't think anyone accuses you of celebrity photo op activism. Eckhart Tolle in his, in a book, “A New Earth,” said, “Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same. The need to stand out, be special, be in control. The need for power, for attention, for more.” How do you think about your own drives and ego and your own climate activism? Because a lot of activism is about, I'm right, look at me, do the right thing, what I say.

Jane Fonda: Well, that's totally why I'm there. I mean, that's the...I mean, why else? No, actually, for me, it's very selfish. I was really going down a rabbit hole of despair. I was very heartened by that incredible outpouring of activism globally, led by Greta Thunberg in 2019. But I didn't know what to do. I knew I had a platform, and I wasn't doing enough, and I was so depressed. And then I read Naomi Klein's book. I had read all her books, but this was a smaller book, and it was just, it arrived the day I was leaving to go up with friends of mine to Big Sur. The galleys of “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal.” And so I got there, I got up there to Big Sur and I sat down and I read the book, and it hit me. You know, when you're ready for it, maybe one of you would read the book now and it wouldn't have this impact, but to me it was like I could feel a lightning bolt hit my solar plexus. And I found a place that had a signal. It was just like one foot. And I called. And I think it's one of the smartest things I ever did in my life. I called Annie Leonard. Because I knew that she was really brave and bold. And she'd done such great things at Greenpeace. And I said, I want to move to D. C. And I want to camp out in front of the White House. And I want to raise a ruckus. And my only concern is I don't know where to poop. See, I have, you know, I love to climb mountains. I do my best above 14,000 feet. I have pooped in the wilderness. And I know what to do, but not in a city. I didn't know what to do. And she laughed and she said, I'm really, I'm so happy that you want to put yourself on the, your body on the line like this, but you don't have to worry about pooping because it's illegal now to camp in front of the White House. But she said, Okay, let me think about this. And she set up, uh, the next day a conference call with Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and then Jay Helfon. I thought, what's she got a lawyer on here for? Because now I understand because I know Jay Helfon. But at any rate, it was at Esalen. It was the only place that had a payphone and I had to borrow a lot of quarters and it was a long time. So hot. And putting quarters in. But that's where Fire Drill Friday was born. We didn't have a name for it yet, but the idea of engaging in a rally and then civil disobedience every Friday and anyway. And the moment that that happened, my depression disappeared. And I have found that every single time I start to get depressed, if I take action it disappears. Greta Thunberg said, don't go looking for hope, look for action and hope will come. And she's right.

Greg Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, there's research that backs that up, that doing, it helps, and the community you find in doing is part of that, the relationships, it's the action in concert with other people. So you were arrested with a bunch of celebrities,

Jane Fonda: And a bunch of non celebrities. I mean, this wasn't just all about, what I loved about it is celebrities introduced frontline activists, you know, who normally whose voices wouldn't be heard and it was all recorded and we have it in perpetuity and hundreds of, I mean, lots and lots and lots and lots of people watch this stuff. And people travel from all over the country, mostly women, mostly older women.

Greg Dalton: And many of whom watched your videos and that's why they were there.

Jane Fonda: Well, they like Grace and Frankie too. You know, I mean, I've been out there in the trenches as an activist when people really hated me. And then I've been out there in the trenches when I was in Grace and Frankie and people loved me. And so I've been at both, and it really helps to have a good, successful TV series behind you if you're going out there.

Greg Dalton: When you were arrested in Washington, D. C., it was your first time since the 1970s. You had your mugshot taken. You were handed a bologna and cheese sandwich. You were locked in your cell. Take us to that moment. What were your thoughts and feelings? When click, you're in a jail cell in Washington, D. C. for protesting on climate.

Jane Fonda: This may sound weird, but when you are putting your body on the line for something that you would give your life for, the deepest thing you can possibly believe in, there is, while they're putting the handcuffs on, those white plastic things, they hurt like hell. But you feel so liberated. I felt so free. It was weird, huh? But, you know, I'll have to be honest. I'm white, I'm famous, I'm privileged. So I knew they weren't going to hurt me. They weren't so nice in Cleveland the first time that it happened. But I knew that I was safe. So, it was really my job to kind of like record what was going on, and what was going on were men and women of color, because this was just the overnight holding place where we were. Psychotic breaks, screaming all night. You know, we just don't, in this country, know how to handle mental health crises. These people should never have been in a jail. They should never have been arrested. And it was just, you know, it was... I was fine, but I just was... The next morning, I was taken out of an individual cell and put into a holding cell with about 12 other women, all of them African American. One of them was really cold. She was so beautiful and she was shivering. I gave her my red coat for a while. And then they got worried that I was cozying up to these people too much and so they took me out and moved me away. But, you know, here's the reality. They said, why are you here? And I said, I was protesting the climate crisis. You know, just barest survival is on their minds. How do I get my next meal? How do I buy my next hit? I did not try to proselytize while I was there. I felt pretty helpless actually.

Greg Dalton: On Climate One today a conversation with activist and actor Jane Fonda. Coming up, she explains her theory of change:

Jane Fonda: Protest matters if the numbers are large and the demands are strategic. So that's one half of the strategy that has to happen.

Greg Dalton: Hear the other half of her strategy when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. Jane Fonda attracted a lot of attention for her climate protests called Fire Drill Fridays, where she wore her bright red coat in Washington D.C. She and many others were routinely arrested. I asked her what she thinks those protests accomplished.

Jane Fonda: We were not, as has been reported in the press, our goal was not to affect the government. We know from the Yale Climate Communications Project that there are a majority of Americans, like 70%, are very concerned about the climate. But they haven't taken action. And they say because they haven't been asked. The great unasked. This is our job now. Is to reach the great unasked. So that's what, we got a lot of press. We had a great press guy working with us, Ira Arlick. And the word got out that this old lady, you know, I turned 81 when I was in jail. And I knew that people would say, Well, God, if she can do it. So, people started coming from all over. I mean, Portland and San Francisco and all over, Wisconsin and they'd never been at a rally before. They'd never been arrested, but they did it and they felt great about it. Yeah. So, that was my, I was asking the great unasked to join, to move beyond concern into action.

Greg Dalton: Let's discuss how you think societal change happens–

Jane Fonda: Because there's got to be two prongs to what needs to happen. One is there have to be unprecedented numbers of people in the streets, peacefully, nonviolently disrupting business as usual. This is what got Roosevelt to create the New Deal. There were thousands and thousands of people in the streets, unions in particular, demanding, demanding the things that he does, he would, that he needed, that needed to be done. And he met with some of them, and they told him what they wanted. And you know what he said, and this is so important, he said, Okay, now go out and make me do it. That's really an important lesson. You know, in 1970, First Earth Day, do you know how many people came out? 20 million. 20 million people came out on First Earth Day. And you know what happened because of that? Nixon created the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the EPA. A conservative Republican, you know, protest matters if the numbers are large and the demands are strategic. So that's one half of the strategy that has to happen.

Greg Dalton: And the other half is, some people say electoral politics has failed us. We have a cash and carry Congress. Do you think electoral politics matters?

Jane Fonda: Well,yeah, if you can't change the people, change the people! Annie Leonard gave me that line. Yeah , Democrats, there are all these Democrats who take money from the fossil fuel industry and they will not let good legislation pass. It almost happened with the Build Back Better bill. And one of the important parts of the big Build Back Better bill was a provision that called for cutting the 20 billion we taxpayers give to the fossil fuel industry every year. That would be such an important thing to have happen. And Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat who takes money from the fossil fuel industry in Texas, and four other oily Democrats, persuaded Nancy Pelosi to take that provision out. Okay, now, Cuellar was up for reelection. Running against him was a young Hispanic woman named Jessica Cisneros. Henry Cuellar is also anti choice. He's not only pro oil, he's anti choice. The Democratic Party backed him. She lost by 800 votes. She's a climate champion and brave and bold, pro choice, and she lost by 800 votes. This has to change. Because it doesn't matter how many thousands of people you have in the streets, the Joe Manchins of the world aren't going to pay attention. You have to get people who will care about what we're demanding, and be serving people and not corporations. And that's what the Jane Fonda Climate PAC is all about. That's all we focus on, is getting out the oily electors, especially the Democrats, and we primary them strategically. And we want to get climate champions elected to office, up and down ballot. Because right now, you can't get much done in Congress right now. But down ballots. Legislatures, state legislatures, city councils, supervisors, controllers. They have such power, you have no idea how much influence they could have over this climate crisis. And they don't get support. Every dollar that goes to them means so much. And you know, Jane Fonda comes along, I can increase the amount of money they make, I can get volunteers to come out, get media, it really, really helps. Last year, we endorsed 60 candidates, 42 of them won their general election. And I went on the road with some of them. And I can't tell you, they're mostly women, many women of color. Brave women, brave people. If you could go out with me, you'd have enough hope for the rest of your life. They're there and they're ready and we have to support them.

Greg Dalton: It's time for our lightning round. This is our Climate One tradition where we have true or false questions with Jane Fonda. True or false, you ate a lot of canned food growing up because your mother was afraid of running out of money.

Jane Fonda: True.

Greg Dalton: True or false, your son Troy was potty trained in a bunker in Vietnam.

Jane Fonda: A school, not a bunker.

Greg Dalton: School. Okay. True or false, his first 13 birthdays were fundraisers.

Jane Fonda: Yeah. I was married to Tom, you know, it's...

Greg Dalton: True or false, you wish you had a husband today?

Jane Fonda: No. No, no, in the words of the great Eve Ensler, I have closed up shop due to flooding.

Greg Dalton: True or false, For much of your life, you've been searching for someone real inside.

Jane Fonda: Yeah. You mean like, my, myself? Yes.

Greg Dalton: True or false, the need for carbon free power is so important that existing nuclear power plants in the U. S. should be kept running as long as safely possible.

Jane Fonda: True.

Greg Dalton: True or false, it's okay to buy real Christmas trees because they're typically grown on cleared and often degraded land.

Jane Fonda: True.

Greg Dalton: True or false, you wish Democrats would nominate someone other than Joe Biden for president in 2024.

Jane Fonda: Uh, no, I mean. It's not going to happen, there is no, we don't have a very deep bench. I mean we do, we have plenty of, I mean Elizabeth Warren could take it on like crazy, but, you know, we, the important thing is that we win. Right? And, when you vote, you're not marrying the guy. Or even asking for a date, it's pragmatic. I would rather push an ally than be stopped by a fascist. And that's what the choice is going to be in 2024.

Greg Dalton: True or false, you and your husband Tom Hayden got the idea to create a business to fund your activism from Lyndon LaRouche, the far right conspiracy theorist.

Jane Fonda: Correct.

Greg Dalton: True or false, you have an induction cooktop in your home.

Jane Fonda: No. I will, though.

Greg Dalton: We can change that. True or false, you are most yourself when you're with your women friends.

Jane Fonda: True.

Greg Dalton: Second part of the lightning round is we have, I'm going to mention a noun, and you will say one word or phrase that comes to your mind from your deep, honest, subconscious, unfiltered. So what comes to mind, Jane Fonda, when I say Henry Kissinger?

Jane Fonda: Death.

Greg Dalton: Lily Tomlin?

Jane Fonda: Unique. I love her so much. Oh my God.

Greg Dalton: Ted Turner?

Jane Fonda: Funny.

Greg Dalton: Leg warmers?

Jane Fonda: Old days.

Greg Dalton: Dolly Parton.

Jane Fonda: Funny.

Greg Dalton: The Inflation Reduction Act.

Jane Fonda: Halfway there.

Greg Dalton: Harry Belafonte.

Jane Fonda: Handsome. Activism.

Greg Dalton: Right, he was a sort of activist with a side gig.

Jane Fonda: That's right. Like me.

Greg Dalton: Flying for pleasure.

Jane Fonda: For pleasure. I, you know, what I, that's one answer, I have to give one, it's not private. But you know something, people, what is with retirement? I, I don't get it. I really don't. I mean, I love what I do. There's nothing more exciting than being an activist and feeling like you're, you're, you're making a difference. And so what, what's to retire from? I don't understand.

Greg Dalton: What's one word or phrase that comes to mind when I say Kamala Harris?

Jane Fonda: Beautiful.

Greg Dalton: Sam Waterston.

Jane Fonda: Smart.

Greg Dalton: Final question. The lightning round. What's the most important political work you’ve done?

Jane Fonda: My work with Annie Leonard.

Greg Dalton: Annie Leonard, former head of Greenpeace USA. Let's give her a round of applause for getting through that lightning round.

Jane Fonda: Thank you.

Greg Dalton: You lived in Georgia for 20 years. After you arrived, you realized that a lot of people didn't like you there. Being married to Ted Turner helped. What did you learn from that experience about... Crossing that coastal divide that's even more profound now in our country. What did you learn living in Georgia?

Jane Fonda: Well, I learned, you know, people talk about the elitists on the coasts. And it's true. You know, I am so grateful for my 20 years in Georgia because I had, I knew the coasts and I knew Paris because I married the French guy. and so living in Georgia. I was raised an atheist, and you know, I'm surrounded, everybody I knew went to church. And it made me really, really consider that. And I entered the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, which is the training center for Black ministers. I was the only white person. I studied there for a couple of years. I studied the Bible.

Greg Dalton: Wow.

Jane Fonda: Yeah.

Greg Dalton: And did you learn empathy for people? Empathy, what did you learn about empathy?

Jane Fonda: I learned empathy, I learned empathy talking to GIs, but yes, what I learned in Georgia was to listen with my heart and to not move so fast and to try to understand why people felt the way they did.

Greg Dalton: I have a climate conscious therapist who helps me deal with the load of this work. What self care do you practice, and how does your inner work sustain your outer work and your activism?

Jane Fonda: Well, I've discovered that it's absolutely critical for, for activists to pay attention to their inner lives and their outer lives. We need rest. We need sleep. We need to eat healthy. We need to keep our energy up. So I do.

Greg Dalton: Can you summon empathy for fossil fuel workers in climate conversation?

Jane Fonda: Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we all do, right? I mean, we know that fossil fuel workers aren't responsible for the climate crisis.

Greg Dalton: There's a lot of villainizing fossil fuel companies for sure. Executives are different than rank and file. There's a lot of anger and villainization in the climate that gets people fired up and mad and mobilized. I'm not sure it's healthy mobilization, but it works in the short term.

Jane Fonda: Yeah, we have to recognize that, you know, fossil fuels is the basis for our whole lives, our economy, our so called progress. Although I do have to think sometimes, would it have been better if we'd never discovered fossil fuels? Yes, it would have. However, we have to recognize that it did spawn a lot of the things that make our lives easier and that we take for granted. But they knew 40 years ago that what they were burning was going to destroy the planet. That it was destroying our climate because their scientists told them in granular detail, by the way. And we know this now because we have the reports. So, the reason that they could easily be demonized, I mean, let's demonize them as much as we can because they knew and they didn't stop drilling. They said that's not as bad for the world as global famine and nuclear holocaust. And they kept drilling and they knew all the way back then and they lied to us. So, it's their fault. They try to blame us. They say it's our fault and the government's fault. It's their fault. And we have to demonize them, but not the workers. We have to make sure that when we transition from fossil fuels to a green, sustainable energy future, that those workers aren't the victims, that they're not the stranded assets that have to be left behind, but that they are trained the way they do in Germany. Germany has, is a coal driven country, and they have, this is what we have to do. Government, community, unions, environmentalists, they all sit down at a table together and they figure it out. Nobody's 100 percent happy, but they all know why they decided to do it this way. The workers are trained while they're still working in the coal industry, and then they transition out of the coal industry to sustainable jobs. That's what has to happen here. And we have to hold our leaders accountable if they don't. We have to keep reminding them. Gavin Newsom. It's called a just transition. And it can be used in any industry. You know, he was me and Annie and a bunch of other people met with him, you know. Shall I tell that story? I was making Grace and Frankie and it was gonna be, it was two days from the first live Fire Drill Friday that we were holding in Los Angeles.

It was a big deal. Gavin Newsom calls me. I'd like to meet with you. He comes down. flies down to Los Angeles on the set of Grace and Frankie. Why? Because he does not like to be criticized. He didn't want me to criticize him. So I said, well, okay, well then do this and this, and this and this. And he said, and this is where it relates to Just Transition, Oh my God, I've just closed this huge prison in the Central Valley somewhere. I can't also close down the fossil fuel stuff because people are so mad at me. And I thought, you can use the Just Transition concept for prisons. If you're going to close down a prison, make sure that all those workers have jobs to go to. You know, I mean, duh. Well, we know what to do if he runs for president. We know how to hold his feet to the fire, and we, and we can, and we can really upset him by protesting stuff that he does, and we have to do that if he's not doing it right. But he did something great that nobody before him has done, he created a 3200 foot setback, separating new oil wells from communities and playgrounds, and people are dying in these places. I have a young friend, she's now, she's, I think, 21, Nalleli Kobo. She won the Goldman Prize, the most prestigious environmental prize, when she was nine, an oil company, Allenco. Opened across the street from her apartment, and suddenly everybody started getting sick in her community. She had nosebleeds that were so bad, she had to sleep sitting up so she wouldn't drown in her own blood. Now she's had a total hysterectomy for cancer of the reproductive at 20, because of the oil. She got it closed, and then everybody started getting better. But there are 2.7 million Californians who live within 3200 feet of oil wells and fracking pits. And they are sick. And they've been protesting for decades. Finally, he did it. And you know what? The oil companies have gotten a referendum on the ballot next year, 2024, to overturn it. I mean, can you believe that? To overturn it. Maybe you've seen their slick ads that are on TV now. You know, about how we have to keep drilling because of national security, it's all being exported. Well, we have to export it because of the war in Ukraine. It was all being planned before there was a war in Ukraine. It's all lies. And this is a must win deal. We cannot allow them to overturn this. Absolutely not. First of all, if they overturn it, that's it. We can never renegotiate this. We can never litigate again in California for setbacks. Number one. Number two. This will go national. This strategy of anything they don't like that happens through a democratic process, they try to overturn. We have to beat them.

Greg Dalton: And Nalleli has been a guest on Climate One. If you look at climate one. org, you'll see a podcast with her sharing her very personal story. She's amazing.

Jane Fonda: Nalleli? Oh, God. Isn't she something?

Greg Dalton: Yeah. We're getting close to the end, and I just want to ask you, in that fabulous documentary, Jane Fonda and Five Acts, you open up about relationships with your parents and forgiving your mother. When you watched your dad die, you felt that he had a lot of regrets, and you said that your, your regrets will be for what you didn't do. So how does that motivate you?

Jane Fonda: Regrets are always for what you didn't do, practically always.

Greg Dalton: And so now that you're 85 and survived multiple cancers, you look fabulous, look very healthy.

Jane Fonda: Thank you. Thank you.

Greg Dalton: How do you think about your legacy, the regrets that you don't want to have?

Jane Fonda: I don't think about it. Really. All I know is that I feel that my life has meaning. I know why I'm here. I feel I've done a good job with what I had and, um, Godda******, I am not going to die with a lot of regrets.

Greg Dalton: Well, thank you for sharing your passion and your courage here on the stage. It means a lot to all of us.

Jane Fonda: Thank you very, very much, thank you.

Greg Dalton: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard, and it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

5:00 – Childhood connection to nature
9:00 – Social awakening in France around the Vietnam War
11:30 – Working with active duty soldiers opposed to the war
13:00 – Discovery of her own privilege
14:40 – Relationship with Tom Hayden and involvement in Indigenous rights
21:00 – Creation of a counter-program for military troops
25:00 – Inspiration for climate activism from Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein
27:00 – Fire Drill Fridays protests
29:30 – Being arrested for protesting climate inaction
35:00 – Role of electoral politics in climate action
37:50 – Climate One lighting round
46:00 – Fossil fuel executive's responsibility for climate disaster
49:00 – Gavin Newsom setting oil and gas setbacks

Play

Naomi Klein and Carolyn Beeler: Covering Big Ideas and Personal Stories

BenTestani — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 20:10:56 +0000

Naomi Klein and Carolyn Beeler: Covering Big Ideas and Personal Stories

09/22/2023

The climate crisis can be difficult to cover in a way that most people can relate to. The mechanism of harm goes from a person's gas car or stove to the Earth's atmosphere and back again in the form of floods and fires. That’s a complicated story to tell, and we rely on journalists to bring those stories to light.

While climate may be the biggest, it’s not the only crisis people are facing. Journalist, social activist and bestselling author Naomi Klein says, “We really are in this moment of overlapping and intersecting disasters that often fuel each other.” The climate crisis touches nearly all aspects of society, and requires a multifaceted approach. Klein says, “When we design policy responses, those policy responses need to multitask.”

A multitasking approach would include, for example, addressing housing affordability, job security, food security and emissions reduction all at once. Failing to include policy solutions for the multiple crises people are facing could create backlash, Klein says. “A lot of climate policies are seen as increasing the cost of daily living for regular people, that it is gonna be just switching from fossil fuels to wind and maybe the wind will be more expensive because we haven't challenged those ownership structures.”

Klein won the Covering Climate Now Journalism Award for Writing Commentary, for her article in The Intercept “From Blah Blah Blah to Blood Blood Blood” in which she criticized last year’s UN climate conference, COP 27, in Egypt.

“Egypt was the site of an extraordinary youth-led revolution in 2011. There was a brief period of hope that it was finally going to perhaps become a democracy only for the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power and repress and then the military to come back to power and introduce more repression than existed under the previous military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak,” Klein tells Climate One. “We are not gonna make any progress when it comes to climate if we aren't forcefully defending political freedoms The work of climate scientists requires free publication; it requires the ability to disclose your research even when it is unflattering to governments.”

The UN climate conference in Egypt did achieve one important agreement: the creation of a loss and damage fund. Loss and damage refers to the idea that wealthy countries pay developing countries for the climate harms caused by emissions from wealthy countries. The details are still being worked out. Some developed countries - scared about setting a precedent for liability - are looking to limit the scope and size of the fund. But wealthy nations even acknowledging their responsibility was a meaningful step forward.

It’s easy to think about the fund and payments in a macro sense, but real people suffering from fossil amplified disasters desperately need help now. Last August Pakistan suffered historic flooding, UNICEF puts the damage around $30 billion. Caroyn Beeler, Environment Reporter and Editor for The World, went to southern Pakistan’s Sindh province to report one family’s experience of the life changing floods.

Her story won Covering Climate Now’s Journalism Award for short form audio. Beeler says, “I wanted listeners to understand what the real stakes were for people on the ground. What loss and damage actually meant and what that felt like specifically in this story for one family.”

This episode was produced in collaboration with Covering Climate Now.

Guests

Carolyn Beeler

Environment Reporter, Editor, The World

Naomi Klein

Author, social activist

From Blah Blah Blah to Blood Blood Blood (theintercept.com)

Toxic Nostalgia, From Putin to Trump to the Trucker Convoys (theintercept.com)

A Pakistani Family Sees Firsthand the Effects of Climate Change (theworld.org)

2023 Covering Climate Now Award Winners (coveringclimatenow.org)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I'm Ariana Brocious

Greg Dalton: The climate crisis can be difficult to cover in a way that most people can relate to. The mechanism goes from a person’s gas stove to the atmosphere and back again in the form of a flood or a fire. That’s a more complicated story than one person punching another in the face.

Ariana Brocious: That's why true stories of individuals or families experiencing the effects of the climate crisis not only puts their story in the spotlight, it makes it easier for people to relate to human-centered stories.

Greg Dalton: The news is important. We need news. And personal stories can help drive people to action. That’s why we’re talking to two journalists who recently won the Covering Climate Now Journalism Award for their work.

Ariana Brocious: Later in this episode we’ll hear from Carolyn Beeler. She covered the story of a family in Pakistan dealing with the aftermath of historic flooding in the country. And I remember that. I distinctly remember looking at the photos and reading some news stories and being horrified by the scope of that disaster. It was really, really shocking.

Greg Dalton: I remember that too, and being horrified at how little Pakistan has contributed to the climate crisis, yet they’re suffering terribly. And then, it faded. And I’m embarrassed and sad to say it was replaced by others: the Canadian wildfires, Maui.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and I don’t think it’s something to be embarrassed about. I think it’s a simple fact that it’s overwhelming. There are just so many things happening at an increasing pace. And it can be really heart-wrenching to read the day’s news. I mean, one of our producers said it’s like mass shootings. You feel the pain and anguish and then it’s replaced by the next one. And we kind of get numb to it. Now there’s major flooding in Libya.

Greg Dalton: Right. I’ve become numb to those mass shooting stories and numb to some of the climate stories. I intentionally decided not to read the Libya story for the first few days.

Ariana Brocious: And as we talk about all of these climate disasters, it also underscores why policies that address loss and damage are so important. Loss and damage is this idea that wealthy countries pay developing countries for the climate damage and harm that the wealthy countries have caused by burning fossil fuels for more than a century.

Greg Dalton: That was a big focus of the UN climate conference in Egypt last year where a fund was created to address loss and damage.

Ariana Brocious: That fund has yet to be funded, but we’ll talk more about that later in the episode. But what I keep coming back to is that addressing the climate crisis revolves so much around addressing multiple areas at once: science literacy, racial and social justice, the economy. There are so many factors.

Greg Dalton: It really does take multitasking, which is a big part of the conversation I had with journalist, social activist and bestselling author Naomi Klein. I’m really excited to have her on the show. She’s a true thought leader. Her books are highly influential and her book, the Burning Case for a Green New Deal inspired Jane Fonda to start her Fire Drill Friday climate protests in front of the US Capitol. Fonda will tell that story on the show next week. This week, I began my conversation with Naomi by asking how she’s been dealing with the climate fueled wildfires near her community.

Naomi Klein: I live in British Columbia on the unceded shíshálh territory on the so-called Sunshine Coast. Weirdly, it has been for us on the coast, we’ve actually had less smoke than many other summers, even though the interior of the province in the north are very, very much on fire, you know, it’s about wind direction. The last week has been pretty hazy but there have been whole months in previous summers and in the last few years when we could barely see a few feet in front of us. So where I am we have gotten off easy so far, knock wood. We had a, I really should knock wood, because last night and early this morning we had some really terrifying lightning storms. And so we're just, you know, it’s very much drought conditions. We are in stage IV water restriction where I am and have been now for weeks. And last year we were off the charts in terms of our water restrictions. It was a state of emergency for water where I am. And, you know, it’s technically a temperate rainforest, which is one of the things that is really sort of uncanny about this moment. There was a headline last year that said, you know, the Sunshine Coast is technically no longer a rainforest. So you really seeing this the ecology flip from one thing to another. And, you know, of course, the people who are really on the frontlines are migrant workers, farmworkers who are in a very precarious status. And when the farms where they’re working shut down, they just get sent back home. And this is money that they need so you know we've been doing some work at the Center for Climate Justice which I codirect lobbying our government to grant status and rights to the migrant workers who have not been able to do the work that they came here to do and are so vulnerable. But, yeah, it’s a lot and I guess Canadian fires have really gotten famous this year because the smoke reached to the center of the universe there in New York so everyone found out what our summers are like.

Greg Dalton: Right. And of course, in Northern California we've had our own bad years so I have empathy for you what you’re going through and for Canadians. Roughly a year ago the headlines were on another disaster amplified by burning fossil fuels, the horrific flooding in Pakistan. And I'm embarrassed to say I had forgotten about Pakistan's floods or block them out in my mind because these disasters are coming so fast and frequently. And those images helped advance an agreement at the UN Climate Conference in Egypt, COP 27, about wealthy countries paying for loss and damage that our lifestyles have inflicted on the Global South. You criticized COP 27 for several reasons. I'm curious what’s your critique of that process?

Naomi Klein: Well, I guess just backing up. The climate crisis is not the only crisis that we humans are facing right now. We really are in this moment of overlapping and intersecting disasters that often fuel each other, right. So we have obviously a pandemic that we’re just sort of slowly coming out of but it's still in our midst. There is an inequality and injustice crisis. There is a housing crisis where you know you mentioned Northern California, you know, I'm sure you remember what happened in the aftermath of the Camp Fire, the Paradise Fire where people were displaced needed to move to neighboring communities and then there was a big backlash against unhoused people. It led to a right-wing city council being elected in Chico. So that interplay between kind of hard right and in some cases, actually kind of fascist politics and the climate crisis I think we need to look very, very closely at, right? I mean more people were displaced by the Pakistan floods than live in Canada. I mean it was absolutely huge. And so the climate crisis is one of the big drivers of displacement within our countries and between our countries. And one of the other crises that we’re facing is surging authoritarianism. And there is no it’s seemingly more potent weapon in the hands of authoritarian politicians than fear of the other. You know, even if the other is internal within the country, but certainly if the other is, you know, a noncitizen on the border and we’re seeing that in the United States. But this relates to I guess the criticism that I and many others had of the fact that we now have a couple of UN climate summits in extremely authoritarian countries. So last year was Egypt in Sharm El-Sheikh. Egypt was the site of an extraordinary youth-led revolution in 2011. There was a brief period of hope that it was finally going to perhaps become a democracy only for the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power and repress and then the military to come back to power and introduce more repression than existed under the previous military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. So my criticism made with others was that we are not gonna make any progress when it comes to climate if we aren't forcefully defending political freedoms, right. The work of climate scientists requires free publication; it requires the ability to disclose your research even when it is unflattering to governments. And it requires people being able to go out and protest and exercise their freedom of expression. It requires the ability to dissent. And so yes, there was the loss and damage agreement made at COP in Sharm El-Sheikh, but we’ll see what comes of that because it was an agreement without money attached. And I think we should be very concerned about rising authoritarianism tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt. And now next COP is happening in the UAE where you know there are very, very few political freedoms. And so it becomes you know more and more like a weird sort of charade where I mean COPs always feel a little bit like a charade, but you know there's like a little pen where there's a sort of a theme park democracy zone where people get to wave signs and say things that people in that country are not able to do, right. And so I think it's a moment where we need to push ourselves in the climate movement to draw these connections between political freedoms authoritarianism climate action build real relationships solidarity with folks on the ground.

Greg Dalton: One of your other critiques I think is the infiltration of fossil fuel interests at the conference of the parties this UN Climate Summit. That was a big topic of discussion last year. It's also a topic of discussion this year. how is that damaging what we know is this collective action problem where we have to come together?

Naomi Klein: Well, I mean it’s going into high parody now, right. I mean it was already pretty absurd when Poland was hosting, you know, and they were having like parallel festivals of coal you know alongside the summit. But now, you know, to have an actual executive of a major oil company be the chair of the COP as is the case for the UAE I think points to really why we have been talking and talking and talking, you know, what is this COP 28. So that means there have been 28 of these summits and all the while emissions have been going up globally. And, I’ll never forget the moment when I was at the pivotal climate summit in Paris and I have never told this story before but there was a protest at the bottom of the Eiffel tower after the final agreement was launched. And I had to write an article and my research assistant was back home. And we were texting I was saying his name is Rajiv Sicora he now works on The Hill. And I said like, Rajiv what is the final agreement say about fossil fuels? And Rajiv texted he’s like, I just did a word search it doesn't say fossil fuels. I said, do word search for gas. He said nothing. I said do a word research for all -- and like is it possible that we have a climate agreement that does not mention fossil fuels? And so that’s the hear of it, I mean how are we gonna do this work if we’re not able to name the single largest contributor to the crisis? And the fact that we now have the chair of the COP, you know, who is himself a fossil fuel executive I think just sort of perhaps it's just going to create a crisis to extent that we now can actually surface it, you know, I don't know, we’ll see. I’m not going. Are you?

Greg Dalton: I’m actually I’m gonna go. I was in Sharm, I didn’t go for a number of years. But you’re right it's an odd thing when it's considered a big win just to get the word coal into the document. Fossil fuel companies are infiltrating the diplomatic realm also, the academic realm. They have a lot to defend including their support of elite research universities as climate catastrophes accelerate, that’s becoming controversial. We saw a Harvard Law school recently stepped down from the board of Conoco Phillips. Controversy swirling around the Doerr school of sustainability at Stanford now there seems to be a focus on MIT. What do you think should be the role of energy companies and elite research universities?

Naomi Klein: I don't think they should be an elite university, or any other universities. It's not just that they are fueling the climate crisis, it's that their money has fueled attacks on scientists over all of these years. And they’ve underwritten the whole messaging machine that led to the hacking of climate scientists’ emails. And so there's a core conflict of interest between an institution that is priding itself on standing for following research wherever it leads and defending academic freedom and being in league with these corporate actors, many of whom have been very active players in a scientific misinformation and attacks on climate scientists in particular. So it’s a huge issue I think it’s also an issue that you have like tenured professors who take like patents out on technologies that act as greenwashing for these oil companies and then in some cases sell them to those companies. So it isn't just like funding the research it’s also a business model. It’s interesting because, you know, I was part of the kicking off of the fossil fuel divestment movement with my friend Bill McKibben when we read the carbon bubble report, the stranded asset report. And I was on the board of 350 at the time, were campuses like sophomore where there were campaigns against coal investments by the university endowment. But there wasn't a national and then international fossil fuel divestment movement. It was you know, it's really wonderful to be part of kicking that off. I was on the do the math tour with Bill and others. And was a real but wonderful tool for organizing on campuses. That's one thing I will say for the fossil fuel divestment movement including building relationships and alliances between faculty who wanted action and wanted a way to have their institutions really stand for their stated values. But, you know, I work in a university and, University of British Columbia, and I didn't always work in the academy. I'm new to the academy just the past five years. And I'm really struck by the difference between the discourse around talking about fossil fuel funding for research and divestment. It's a lot easier for faculty to criticize where a university's pension fund goes or endowment goes, than it is to talk about where one of their colleagues is getting their funding. Really that violates like a core principle around collegiality

Greg Dalton: Yeah, most professors don't interact with the university endowment. They may get some money from it, but it doesn't touch their daily job which is the grants and you’re right their colleagues. Now you're talking about scholarships for earth sciences and earth science departments are full of fossil fuel funding.

Naomi Klein: And you’re talking about you know your friend down the hall. You know you're talking about people that you know that you like it just gets trickier. And so I think that this is a huge issue, but part of the reason why it hasn't taken off like divestment is because this sort of collegiality which in principle is a good thing. but not if we’re self -censoring about something important.

Greg Dalton: This week I saw social media personality post about Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century which was published a decade ago. then came doughnut economics, degrowth, post growth, we recently did a whole episode on that. As an intellectual leader in that arena I'm curious how you see the shape and scope of that conversation. And if the Overton window, the zone of socially acceptable discourse is expanding.

Naomi Klein: You know my answer to that depends on the day. On my bad days I feel like it's more possible to talk about it because there's less action. Like that it sorts of more kind of social media performance. The boundaries of acceptable discourse are expanding at a time when sort of speech itself is experiencing a sort of a currency devaluation or to quote Greta Thunberg, there's just a lot of blah, blah, blah going on. I mean it's easy to say things if you don't plan on doing them, right? And so I think the moment we’re in and I would say that's not just about climate. I mean, I think there's a lot of feeling around racial justice that post 2020 there was just a lot of discourse, a lot of positioning, a lot of companies talking about how they stood with Black Lives Matter, but like really seeing the changes? That said, I do think that discourse matters. I mean I engage in it for a living. And I do think words matter when we attach them to real actions. And I am heartened that there is more discussion around degrowth in particular, less so the sort of like normalization of a critique of capitalism. Sometimes I do feel like it's almost trendy to just be like oh, this is just like, you know, necropolitics capitalism, and it's coupled with a resignation that it's just the way things are and you’re not trying to change it. If it's connected with ways that people are organizing in their workplaces in their institutions in their neighborhoods in their communities, trying to change those systems, whether they’re suing big oil, they're demanding that their employers kick out the fossil fuel funders. I mean that gives me hope because it means that we’re connecting discourse with action. And degrowth in particular, you know, I think it does start to get to the heart of the problem which is that we have an economy that we have a definition of success that equates a healthy economy with growing consumption. And yes, you can say oh you can decouple growth from conception, but we haven't done that we haven't done that at all. the extent it’s possible it’s so marginal. it doesn't mean that we can't grow the parts of our economy that we absolutely need to grow as we rollout renewables as we invest in low carbon sectors like the care economy. But we have to have a much more deliberate economy where we decide based on our goals and our values where we want to grow and where we need to contract because the earth systems can’t handle it. And so I am heartened by that discourse but the challenge is always to connect it with actions in our real lives.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about how journalism can help make personal connections to climate impacts. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen.

Ariana Brocious: Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on any topic.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, how housing policy is an overlooked climate issue.

Naomi Klein: In terms of who dies during these disasters. It's often inadequate housing, inadequate circulation, inadequate weatherization.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

It’s important to remember that the climate crisis is intertwined with so many other crises in people’s lives. And if we try to address climate without addressing housing, the extreme concentration of wealth, environmental racism, we won’t get to the deep roots of the intertwined problems. But tackling all those things at once is daunting.

Let’s get back to my conversation with best selling author, journalist and activist Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein: Most people have a lot of different crises that they're contending with in their lives, including an affordability crisis, including a housing crisis. And if we just sort of try to lift climate out of all of that that whole web of interlocking and intersecting crises then we're probably gonna end up with policy responses that don't take them into account, right? And so I think a lot of backlash to climate action comes from the fact that a lot of climate policies are seen as increasing the cost of daily living for regular people, that it is gonna be just switching from fossil fuels to wind and maybe the wind will be more expensive because we haven't challenge those ownership structures and we haven't introduced community controlled wind which is possible to do. Denmark has done it, you know, and then you have the real community buy-in because the extent to which it generates profits, they stay in the community, it funds services, it creates jobs. And that's how you get like robust and sturdy buy-in. Because if you do it the other way, what you end up with is backlash and we’re seeing that in all kinds of different contexts.

Greg Dalton: Right. The cost is direct and personal and immediate and the benefits are for somebody else tomorrow. You talk about climate justice as multitasking, which I think is a really relatable and useful term. mean by that?

Naomi Klein: Well, I think we start from the premise that climate is one of multiple crises, a really big one, and I would certainly argue that all the others fit inside it because we’re talking about the infrastructure in which all of life on this planet unfolds. But it's in this web; it's in this web of other crises. So when we design policy responses those policy responses need to multitask, right. So, you know, where I live in Canada many first nations don't have adequate water, don't have clean water, don't have electricity, and are owed reparations for the theft of their land. And so a multitasking response to the climate crisis would say that first nations should be first in line to own and control their own renewable energy projects and that should include training, jobs, profits flowing to the communities. And that isn't a replacement for getting clean water and health care and actually respecting treaty rights and land rights. You know another example where I live in the Pacific Northwest there is a housing crisis. It’s a desirable place to live in part because of climate change, right, we’ve got migrants coming from California. Vancouver is a ridiculously unaffordable city. And it's so bad and tenants are so vulnerable to what is called renoviction, right. Their landlord improves their housing a little bit and they up the rent and kick them out, that even though 600 people in British Columbia died during the heat dome in, there is still a lot of concern about landlords installing heat pumps and doing retrofits that could save lives in the next heat dome because tenants are convinced that they will be evicted in the name of green retrofits. and they’re not wrong, they’re not wrong. They could very well be evicted because of that. So the question like a multitasking solution would be how do we lower the rent and lower emissions at the same time? How do we recognize that housing is actually a human right and really get serious about nonmarket housing and tenant protection? I realize this doesn't sound like a climate issue, but it is a climate issue because housing is a big, big emitter.

Greg Dalton: I totally agree. And I’ve been trying to get climate people to talk about housing for a long time and they think oh that's not why I went to school for that’s not my thing, Housing is very urban. Yeah, it’s not their thing and housing is a huge climate lever it’s just not often seen as such.

Naomi Klein: Yeah, it’s both a climate risk, right, I mean in terms of who dies during these disasters. It’s often inadequate housing, inadequate circulation, inadequate weatherization. But also, people will resist the changes if they're not fair, right. Like often climate justice advocates get treated like, oh, you’re slowing us down you're making it more complicated can’t we just do a carbon tax can’t we just like, you know, make this really simple. But that doesn't account for the backlash. Because when you have unjust climate policy it’s one step forward and two steps back.

Greg Dalton: You have been an influential thinker on what happens after fossil amplified fires, floods and hurricanes. What is disaster capitalism and how was the disaster capitalism complex evident in Maui today?

Naomi Klein: Yeah, this is what actually brought me to climate research. first books in my early journalism was really about economic inequality and human rights, which is, you know, probably why keep coming back to it. And in 2005 I had just returned from Iraq and I had done some writing for Harper’s about the privatization of war and occupation and reconstruction in Iraq in the aftermath of the US invasion, right. So casting our minds back some people were probably too young to remember but it was a little bit shocking the extent to which that was a privatized endeavor, right. So yes you have the US military, but the bases were built by Halliburton and you know all of the juicy reconstruction contracts were given to American companies in really sweetheart deals like Bechtel. You had the highest percentage of mercenary soldiers fighting alongside American military officers. You have Blackwater there, you know, in the theater as they say. And then, so I was working on this as I said, you know, reporting on it for Harper’s and I was thinking about expanding it into a book and then Hurricane Katrina happened. And the photographer who I had been in Baghdad with Andrew Stern called me from New Orleans and said, they're all here it’s Halliburton, Blackwater like, you know, one reporter described it as Baghdad on the Bayou. And so that's when I started writing about the disaster-capitalism complex and also something that I call the shock doctrine. So that research led to my 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. And The Shock Doctrine refers to the strategy of exploiting states of shock when people are necessarily focused on the day-to-day business of staying alive, whether it's because they’re under evacuation or their home, you know, their neighborhood is under assault, military assault. And moving in so quickly, precisely because people can't be engaged in politics in a moment like that or it's very hard to be to push through a kind of policy wish list. So after the flooding of New Orleans and after it was evacuated it became a laboratory for education privatization. New Orleans is the most privatized school system in the United States because public schools were shut down and reopened as charter schools. Public housing that wasn't storm damaged but was on desirable higher ground was bulldozed and replaced with market housing. So, you know, whenever there is one of these huge disasters, I almost always get some emails from folks on the ground saying it's happening again and I take no pleasure in this, you know. But I did hear from some colleagues in Maui and on other islands as well. And they were telling me that it wasn't only real estate agents who were calling residents who had just lost their homes on Maui and trying to urge them to sell their ancestral homes. But also, that there had been this big victory for water rights right before this. And that was being rolled back under cover of emergency. So yeah, it's a pretty old playbook. It's very cynical. It happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria as well. I wrote a piece for the Guardian with Kapuaʻala Sproat who’s a wonderful legal scholar. And she calls it plantation disaster capitalism because she wants to really underline that this is not new, this is part of a long history of resource grabbing in Hawaii.

Greg Dalton: Right. The whole colonial history laid the foundation for that. The very positive story out of Yasuni National Park I know you've written about Ecuador. That surprised me honestly, I wasn't following it I didn't think that would happen. Does that give you hope?

Naomi Klein: I mean, yes, and, you know, that is a victory that is just decades in the making. I don't think people really understand how deep it is. The whole concept of ecological debt of the idea of there being a debt owed from north to south and to the south in the north comes from the environmental justice movement in the Global South and the North, but in particular in the Niger Delta where the oil fields have decimated so many lives, and continue to and in Ecuador because of the despoliation of the rainforest there. And so for a long time there’s been a lot of movement thinking about what it would mean to really to leave the oil in the ground but not say, well, this is only the responsibility of some of the poorest people on the planet to keep it there that we all benefit when that oil in the Yasuni rainforest stays underground. That that is a gift to all of humanity. And the burden of it should not only be carried by those in Ecuador who made that extraordinary decision. So I would say it's a victory but it’s actually only a partial victory. They did their part by saying we want to keep it in the ground but we still haven't done our part in the wealthier countries to push our governments help them pay for the healthcare and other forms of poverty reduction so that there isn’t been a backlash against this because it could happen; it could happen in a few years.

Greg Dalton: Right, the Ecuadorian government asked the international community to pay to keep that oil on the ground and no one came up with much money, but then Ecuador and people voted to do it anyways. As we get through the end, “hopium” is a term I'm starting to hear in the climate conversation. You say you have a complicated relationship with hope. Can you tell me about that?

Naomi Klein: Hey, that’s funny I first used that term a long time ago. It's funny. I used it after Obama was elected on a campaign of hope.

Greg Dalton: There you go.

Naomi Klein: Yeah. I have a complicated relationship with the term hope only because I think hope is something we earn; it isn't something we have. And I guess it comes back to what we're talking about earlier about connecting words with language. I sometimes think that that people think that it's just almost like a commodity like I have hope. And I have it like a lot of things on some days but not on others, and the days when I have it it's because I see amazing organizing going on and there is still incredible organizing and I see new people coming into this movement and making all of these connections and insisting on intersectional climate movement. And that's when I think we've earned the right to a ray of hope.

Greg Dalton: Naomi Klein is a professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and New York Times best-selling author of many climate books. Thank you, Naomi for coming on Climate One I hope we get a chance to talk again.

Naomi Klein: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Greg. Take care.

Greg Dalton: You're listening to a conversation about a human-centered approach to covering climate. This is Climate One. Coming up, how do you tell a story about loss and damage that makes that policy human?

Carolyn Beeler: This family lost their house and they lost wages for several months. So would there be a way that money could have flowed from for example, the Global North or historical emitters into Pakistan and get right into the hands of these families.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next.

Last year’s UN Climate Conference in Egypt concluded with one major positive outcome: the creation of a loss and damage fund for wealthy, high-emitting countries to pay developing countries to reduce future climate impacts and adapt to harms that will inevitably happen. The details are still being worked out. Some developed countries - scared about setting a precedent for liability - are looking to limit the scope and size of the fund.

Ariana Brocious: But rich nations even acknowledging their responsibility was a meaningful step forward. It’s easy to think about the fund and payments in a macro sense, but there are people who are suffering from fossil amplified disasters they aren’t responsible for, desperately in need of help.

Greg Dalton: Last August Pakistan suffered historic flooding, UNICEF puts the damage around $30 Billion. Caroyn Beeler, Environment Reporter and Editor for The World, went to southern Pakistan’s Sindh province to report one family’s experience of the life changing floods.

Caroyln Beeler:

Abdul Ghani's family fled to the roof of a nearby school when the floodwaters came in August. They were here on this sun-scorched spot when waves in the floodwaters, whipped up by heavy winds, destroyed their home.

Our hearts sank, Ghani says. The house that was our shelter, our children's home, was destroyed. Ghani lived in that house with his wife and three kids, along with his seven brothers and their families. From the roof of the school, you can see one remaining room, surrounded by water. This is my home, he says, pointing to what remains.

I built this house on my own, he says. No one helped me. When it fell, it was heart wrenching. The floodwaters only receded enough for them to come down from the school roof two weeks ago. So you spent two months living on this corner here of this roof. Yeah, he says. Now they've moved off the roof and down into the school itself.

Each family has one of the classrooms to sleep in and people hang out in the courtyard. Ghani's wife, Hir Mala, is squatting over a fire in the hallway, stirring a pan of stewed greens and potatoes. Their three and five year old stand watching behind her as we talk. How have your kids been? Have they been healthy?

The children are not healthy here, she says.

But what can we do? We're helpless until we return home. Our children play in the flood water. We try to stop them, but they won't listen. She thinks that's where her son's cough came from. Her two oldest also have malaria. Their fevers just broke yesterday. Cases tripled in this province at the height of the floods.

We dream that our kids will get educated and become doctors, she says, with a smile. But how are they going to do that if they can't go to school? Scientists say climate change made this flooding more intense, and it's largely impacted poorer folks in Pakistan who've done the least to cause it.

Mullah tells me she's only ridden in a car once on their wedding day. UN negotiators pushing for loss and damage funding argue that post disaster aid comes at the whim of donors. So far, a UN appeal for Pakistan has brought in only a third of its goal. And when aid comes, it can be slow, which means that an initial disaster can cascade into massive health and economic problems.

Five of Abdul Ghani's brothers and their families are sheltering in the school now. Ghani's niece, 12 year old Fatima Mullah, now sleeps in a classroom a few doors down from where she used to be in second grade. Where was your desk?

She and a few of her cousins in the same class point to spots in a room where an aunt and uncle now sleep. English was one of Fatima's favorite subjects and she shows hers off to me. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. So it's like a, a, candlelight. She says she likes it here because she plays a lot with her cousins.

They tear through the courtyard playing tag while I visit. But Fatma says she really misses school. Her mom, Shehzadi Mala, says it's true.

She cries and says, bring back my books, but we can't because we don't have money. Shazadi Mala says we can't even eat three meals. How can we buy books? The family is down to two meals a day. The cow whose milk they used to sell this tied up in the school's courtyard under a line of drying laundry. All the cows grazing land is flooded.

So she's not producing enough milk for the family to sell. The places where Abdul Ghani used to work as a Mason are all flooded too.

He shows me the nets he just bought to start fishing the floodwaters. It's hard to tease out how much climate change contributed to the losses suffered by Ghani and his extended family. Warming made the rains more intense here, but other factors also drove the damages, like development on floodplains, inadequate infrastructure, and a lack of good warning systems.

Ghani tells me he didn't know the floods were coming until water from breached embankments arrived at his house. The difficulty of attributing damages to climate change is part of the reason that until this year, no national government had pledged money for them. But as climate fueled catastrophes have started to accelerate, that has started to change.

For The World, I'm Carolyn Beeler in Dadu District, Pakistan.

Ariana Brocious: Carolyn won this year’s Covering Climate Now Journalism Award from for that piece. When I spoke with her, I asked her to tell me the backstory behind that reporting in Pakistan.

Carolyn Beeler: So I went to Pakistan in November of last year when the COP climate conference was happening. And I went very intentionally at that time because I knew that Pakistan would be raising the call and leading the charge to create a fund for loss and damage, loss and damages at this climate conference. And, you know, I knew a lot of journalists would be at the conference itself doing great coverage of what was happening there but I wanted listeners to understand what the real stakes were for people on the ground. What loss and damage actually meant and what that felt like specifically in this story for one family? So while I was in Pakistan I was keeping an eye on the news that was coming out of the COP climate summit and reporting some of that but tying it in really to the lived experiences of people on the ground.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and this is really striking because I think those climate negotiations can feel very distant and kind of esoteric even though they are of course dealing with issues that are facing people every day. And so being able to connect that to this experience does I think for our listener help them understand. So these floods were horrific, extraordinarily damaging. If you could, tell us like what would be a connection to loss and damage at the climate conference like what might be a solution or something that could help families like this if that was actually being discussed at the COP conference.

Carolyn Beeler: Yes, so I mean I think the primary objective of me during this reporting was to actually just show what loss and damage means on the ground to families. So this is like very early days for the idea of this fund and it is not at all clear how money might be distributed. But in this case, this family lost their house and they lost wages for several months. So would there be a way that money could have flow from for example, the Global North or historical emitters into Pakistan and get right into the hands of these families to be able to rebuild the house or make up for lost wages things like that. Again, that’s the idea that some people are talking about loss and damage but it's very political. There's a lot being discussed, and it's not at all clear how that money might flow. Another difficulty that I think I pointed to in the story is that you know, how much of a disaster is fueled by climate change, how much is natural more natural less man-made event. How much might be have been able to be prevented with better early warning system. So another problem with following the money from any sort of loss and damage fund into the hands of a family like this is exactly how much of their house being destroyed was because of climate change versus “normal flooding” or poor early warning system, things like that.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and it's interesting we had an interview recently with someone from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the increasing ability of scientists to actually parse out that data. It's becoming a really interesting field where they can say with more specificity this, you know, hurricane was amplified X amount by climate and these emissions even came from this particular sector or particular area which is really interesting. So I do want to note for listeners that that fund, there was a success last year at COP 27 there was a fund for loss and damage created. However, it has yet to actually be funded, money has not been transferred. So climate is a natural and of course embedded part of the environment which is your coverage area, but it intersects with so many other areas as well. How does climate appear in the stories that you report all across the world?

Carolyn Beeler: Yes, so I am the environment correspondent and editor. So I’m kind of the most visible person who covers climate change. But it is part of a lot of the stories that we do. So most of what I do these days is climate coverage. So I was in Pakistan in November reporting on these floods. I've been to Antarctica reporting on glacial melt there. I’ve done post-disaster reporting looking at climate resilience in places like the Caribbean Island of Dominica. So, you know, a lot of my reporting around the world is really focused on climate, the human impacts of climate adaptation, mitigation, things like that. But I'm proud of the coverage that we do, that I don't do the fact that we have really worked hard to integrate climate coverage into all of our reporting. We have reporters based all over the world and they all do climate stories. They all do stories that have to do with environmental science or climate impacts. Because we acknowledge and understand and want to share with listeners that climate change impacts every facet of life, not just what you think of as “environment stories.”

Ariana Brocious: Yes, exactly, right. Earlier this year you did some reporting from Ukraine, both on the war there itself and on the environmental fallout of that. Tell us a bit about what you saw and heard reporting there.

Carolyn Beeler: Yeah if you want to focus on the environmental fallout. I was reporting in June on this topic and it's one that I think doesn't get a ton of coverage because a lot of the more immediate and frankly devastating impacts of the war are so front of mind. You know, obviously we should be thinking about loss of life, livelihood and property first, especially loss of life. But the environmental impacts of the war that's going to be around for decades to come. So some of the main impacts especially early in the war Russian hits were targeting industrial sites things like oil depots. And so you had just tons and tons of industrial chemicals and oil that reached into the groundwater and soil. So I visited one community outside of Kyiv where a giant oil depot was hit. It burned to this black thick smoke for five days early on in the war. And then a couple months later, residents of the closest village notice that this lake that they use to visit to swim out and sunbathe by was being covered by oil. So that's just one example of how that can impact one community. People there do drink water out of wells and that area with the lake used to be a fun spot for recreation was no longer. I also saw a place in the national forest outside of Kyiv where a Russian missile that had been intercepted and exploded before it hit the ground, landed. And even though it had been destroyed, you know, mostly before it hit the ground, you know, there's this big ring of forest that was burnt to a crystal that looked like charcoal and you could still smell this jet fuel that had leached into the ground after that happened. And that was just this one tiny, tiny example of how forests all around the country are being decimated. If you think about the front line is like 600 odd miles stretching along the eastern border of Ukraine and there's this old-school trench warfare there that is digging up forest, ripping up forest creating forest fires everywhere. So that is having a big impact in forests and also in protected areas around the country.

Ariana Brocious: You also traveled to Norway on that trip if I'm not mistaken. So what were you doing there what were you reporting on?

Carolyn Beeler: Yeah, so Norway became the biggest exporter of natural gas to Europe in 2022 as Europe try to wean itself off of Russian fuels and also Russia cut supplies of gas heading to Europe. So increased about 8% in 2022. Their oil exports are expected to increase about that much maybe 6, 7% this year. So Norway has stepped in as a reliable source of fossil fuels to Europe and increased their expansion. You know not a huge amount but not an insignificant amount either. And so I was reporting on that there and really looking at this idea of whether the increased demand for their fossil fuel products and increased higher prices might increase production far down the road, not just in the near term. Europe really needs those additional fuel sources, but whether this will trigger investments that will lead to more exploration and then production, you know, for decades to come. So there are green party members and environmental activists who are really concerned that the high prices and investment now will lead to a lot more extraction 10, 20, 30 years from now when the world needs to be burning almost no fossil fuels in order to reach net zero and the climate targets that countries including Norway have signed onto. So I think the top line is that it's probably too early to say if Norway's long-term fossil fuel extraction will increase because of this war, but there is right now additional investment including in exploration that could lead that way. So, Norway is an increasingly important provider of energy to Europe and the way that energy thing talked about there has really changed. And the political conversation about it has changed a bit. And so there might be repercussions of that down the road.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, that's interesting. It's interesting to travel to some other places that are experiencing these effects of the war. Elsewhere in this episode we talk with author and activist Naomi Klein who is very critical of last year's UN climate summit as we’ve called, you know, COP, known as a conference of parties in Egypt. What are you paying attention to for this year's upcoming conference of parties in the UAE?

Carolyn Beeler: Yeah, I mean the challenge of these climate summits is that they are based on consensus, and you have countries from the Marshall Islands to giant oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia who are trying to agree on something. So you're never going to get giant steps forward. So far, we’ve seen you know very incremental progress on a problem that needs very rapid progress. However, they are the only place that international climate policy gets made. So as flawed as they are, they are a place where everyone comes to the table and has to talk about these things. So this upcoming COP I think will also have a lot of challenges being hosted by a major fossil fuel producing company. We’ve seen a lot of potential conflicts of interest in the leadership of that COP. So I will be interested to see what if any sort of real progress comes out of that meeting. Also, again this year I think you know it’ll be important to see how civil society activists are treated, you know, freedom of the press, etc.

Ariana Brocious: Carolyn Beeler is environment correspondent and editor at The World. Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Carolyn Beeler: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking with award winning climate journalists Carolyn Beeler and Naomi Klein. This episode was produced in collaboration with Covering Climate Now.

Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on topics including food, energy, EVs, activism. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Ariana Brocious: Greg Dalton is Host and Executive Producer. Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Ariana Brocious.

3:26 Naomi Klein on her personal experience with wildfires
12:38 Naomi Klein on the fossil fuel industry’s impact on research and higher education
16:16 Naomi Klein on the moving of the Overton Window
20:26 Naomi Klein on the multiple crises faced by everyday people
22:00 Naomi Klein on a multitasking response to the climate crisis
25:20 Naomi Klein on disaster capitalism
34:30 A Pakistani Family Sees Firsthand the Effects of Climate Change
39:35 Carolyn Beeler on traveling to Pakistan to create her award winning piece
43:02 Carolyn Beeler on how climate shows up in stories around the world
44:31 Carolyn Beeler on the environmental fallout of the war in Ukraine
49:11 Carolyn Beeler on what to look for at COP 28

Play

Fairytales and Fear: Stories of Our Future

BenTestani — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:21:51 +0000

Fairytales and Fear: Stories of Our Future

09/01/2023

Stories are the way we remember, the way we share knowledge, the way we play out possible outcomes. Climate fiction imagines dark or bright futures depending on how we address the climate crisis. But there’s a healthy debate about what kind of writing inspires more people to act.

Fiction writers like Paolo Bacigalupi tend to frame our climate future as dark and dystopian as a way of pushing people to pay attention and take action.

“A well-written story of warning can create a sense of unease and a sense of awareness that otherwise doesn't exist for people,” he says. “I think that if you want to create change in a democratic society, people have to believe that there is actually a threat.”

His 2015 dystopian thriller "The Water Knife," set in a water-starved Southwest, features a central character known as a "water knife" — sort of an assassin/spy who sabotages and steals water from neighboring states. Bacigalupi says he was driven to write this story after witnessing the historic drought in Texas in 2011.

“It was terrifying,” he says. “They were in an ahistorical experience, and yet it also matches very closely with what climate scientists predict for our future. And so in that moment when you're there looking at this disaster unfolding, you can think, ‘Oh, I'm in a drought.’ Or you can say, ‘Oh, I'm time traveling. What does this future look like?’”

He wants readers to feel disturbed by the close parallels between his writing and our present reality – and be driven to take action.

"I hope to make them feel like the walls of their home are closing in on them. That nothing that they live in is stable or secure. I hope that they are horrified and think, 'Oh, just because today looks good doesn't mean tomorrow is safe,'" he says.

Despite the widespread popularity of climate dystopia in literature as well as on TV and in Hollywood, writers like Denise Baden think that’s the wrong approach to take. In addition to her work as a sustainability professor in the U.K., she writes climate fiction and leads climate fiction contests called Green Stories. She also edited a recent anthology of hopeful climate stories called “No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet.”

“Positive stories with solutions, whether it be in the field of news or education or fiction, actually engage way more people than more catastrophic tales of what will go wrong if we don't do anything,” she says.

Hope is also a driving factor behind the climate fiction contest organized by Grist, a nonprofit online news outlet. Climate Fiction Creative Manager Tory Stephens says they wanted to encourage the creation of climate stories that are inclusive and resonant for all people. Their “Imagine 2200” contest brief asks writers to submit intersectional and hopeful stories of the future.

“The genre is changing, but many of the [climate fiction] stories I read did not have frontline community members,” Stephens says. “So I really wanted those folks to be represented. We wanna see everyone reflected in this fight for a better climate.”

This episode features an excerpt of the audio recording of “The Cloud Weaver’s Song,” written by Saul Tanpepper and recorded by Curio.

Guests

Denise Baden

Green Stories Project; Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of Southampton; author, "Habitat Man"

Paolo Bacigalupi

author, "The Water Knife"

Tory Stephens

Climate Fiction Creative Manager, Grist

Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction Contest (grist.org)

The Cloud Weaver’s Song (grist.org)

No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet (habitatpress.com)

The Water Knife (windupstories.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One, I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious. Today, we’re talking about climate fiction. And I’m excited to dig into it.

Greg Dalton: As we talked about in our episode a few months back with television producers, climate is a growing topic in Hollywood and on TV. But there seem to be more works of literature that delve into the consequences of burning fossil fuels.

Ariana Brocious: And as we know, stories are probably the most compelling and effective way we have of sharing and remembering information – our brains are hardwired for it. But there’s a healthy debate about what kind of writing most inspires people to act.

Greg Dalton: Right, and what sells as entertainment and what causes people to act may not be the same stories. Fiction writers like Paolo Bacigalupi have a tendency to frame our climate future as dark and dystopian as a way of pushing people to pay attention and take action.

Paolo Bacigalupi: A well-written story of warning can create a sense of unease and a sense of awareness that otherwise doesn't exist for people.

Greg Dalton: Despite the popularity of climate dystopia, writers like Denise Baden think that’s the wrong approach to take.

Denise Baden: Positive stories with solutions, whether it be in the field of news or education or fiction, actually engage way more people than more catastrophic tales of what will go wrong if we don't do anything.

Ariana Brocious: And some, like Tory Stephens, are focused on ensuring climate stories are inclusive and resonant for all people.

Tory Stephens: So many people are story driven. So we wanna reach all people around the climate crisis and talk about climate solutions, the hope and justice side of things.

Greg Dalton: Let’s get into your conversation with Paolo Bacigalupi, an award-winning bestselling author of speculative fiction.

Ariana Brocious: In 2015, you published the water knife, a dystopian thriller about a water starved southwest in which the poor eke out a dusty survival while the rich enjoy lush elite reserves. And in Nevada, a central character known as a water knife, which is sort of an assassin slash spy. Sabotages and steals water from neighboring states. In this world, the Western U.S. has devolved into a militarized landscape where every state has its own border patrol to keep water crisis refugees from states like Arizona and Texas out. The picture you paint in this novel is pretty dark, I would say. And it also, as a resident of the Southwest, feels possible. So I'm wondering, what drove you to sort of create this grim future?

Paolo Bacigalupi: I think that, I mean, the reason why I ended up writing this book, specifically, The Water Knife, was because I wanted to talk about climate change, and I wanted to set it in a space that felt viscerally vulnerable. And, and it was specifically because I felt like I was watching a lot of trendlines that were all going in sort of the wrong direction. The moment when I decided I was really going to be writing about drought and about climate change, and specifically in the United States happened because I was actually down in Texas during their major drought in 2011. And it was a terrible drought. you know, their farms were sort of going dry. They were having to kill off their cattle. There were rolling brownouts because their hydroelectric dams didn't have enough water in them to have enough hydraulic head to spin their turbines.

You were seeing record breaking numbers of a hundred degree days, and this is back. You know, look, my gosh, this is like 13 years ago now, and it was this, it was, it was terrifying. It was this moment where, you know, they were in an ahistorical experience, and yet it also matches very closely with what climate scientists predict for our future. And so in that moment when you're there looking at this disaster unfolding, you can think, oh, I'm in a drought. Or you can say, oh, I'm time traveling. You know, what does this future look like? And, and that, that was sort of the beginning point. And that was combined specifically with the fact that Rick Perry, the governor of Texas at that time his response to that massive drought was to go around and, and urge people to pray for rain. And so there was this sort of magical thinking sort of attitude towards what would resolve these problems and how we would become resilient to these problems. Let's pray. As opposed to, wow, these things are real serious and they're going to get worse. And we need to actually start building, you know, a policy future and an infrastructure future that's more resilient for what's coming. The reason why I wrote in this Colorado River and the Southwest is because I grew up in the Southwest and so I've always been aware of water and drought issues. And there's a lot of climate data that says that this is a vulnerable area. So it was a good space to sort of set the story in and try to sort of open up some of the questions and uncertainties that exist around climate change.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and I mean, in the moment we're in, we have reached a really scary point on the supply of the Colorado River this year. And states like Arizona are already taking pretty significant cuts. And you know, the discussion continues around trying to find collaborative ways of working together to sort of share the water, share the less water. So we're not yet at a point that is obviously as dark as we get to in the Water knife, but we can also see that future. And I'm wondering do you think some of your writing, some of the dystopian elements of the writing are predictive of what could happen or are they rather sort of cautionary tales that we should try to avoid?

Paolo Bacigalupi: I think I'm writing the stupid version of a human future. It's the one where people make all the dumb decisions, the selfish decisions, the ignorant decisions, and then you sort of extrapolate from there. So if everybody lives in denial about whether or not we're gonna have lots of water in the Colorado River, We're gonna eventually have a bunch of subdivisions that have to be dried up because we just don't have the supply. Or, you know, there's gonna be cuts somewhere. Somebody's gonna hurt, somebody's gonna take that. Whether that's at a, you know, state versus state level or whether that's a subdivision versus subdivision level. And something like The Water Knife just goes on the assumption, and really it sort of is balancing these two concepts: One of them is, you know, that Las Vegas recognizes that it's incredibly vulnerable and starts making moves to try to protect itself. And Phoenix sort of tries to pretend like nothing's wrong and as a result starts to collapse. I think that one of the things that's interesting to me about our present moment with the Colorado River is that everything that's happening now was pretty damn obvious, you know, 15 years ago. This was not some like, “Surprise. Oh my goodness. We ran outta water!” This was like, we are running out of water. This is happening. Get on the program and instead we pretended for the last 15 years we could have been building resiliency for 15 years. and instead we've done nothing. And now, you know, like now it's come together with a collaborative solution. Oh. And you know, and then everybody dickers some more while they try to figure out like, how bad is this drought this year? As opposed to how bad is the long term prognosis for us.

Ariana Brocious: There's one line, from a character in the water knife early on that really exemplifies this and I'll just read it.

“We knew it was all going to hell and we just stood by and watched it happen. Anyway, there ought to be a prize for that kind of stupidity.” And just to sort of underscore what you, you just said, I think that's a great, and he's speaking about the water crisis, you could equally apply that to the climate crisis.

Paolo Bacigalupi: Right? Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's the kind of the central argument of the entire book is that question of, do we engage with reality seriously, or do we try to pretend that reality isn't coming at us? And, and so far, I mean, it's weird, like the jury's still out on that. I'm somewhat regretful that, that The Water Knife feels more predictive now than it did when I was writing in 2014 about I remember when it came out in 2015, the United States had just joined the Paris Accords, and I thought, oh, well maybe we're actually heading towards a more rational future in some way. And then right after that we elected Trump and I thought, oh, well, no, we're actually headed for more stupid.

Ariana Brocious: So I wanna turn now to a short story that you contributed to this anthology called No More Fairy Tales and elsewhere in this episode, we speak with the editor of that anthology. So in this story, in a future Chicago redesigned lower income neighborhoods rely on solar power microgrids. People get around using autonomous on demand public transport called Hood Zips. So if you would, I'd like you to read one excerpt that helps set the scene.

Paolo Bacigalupi: James was just old enough that he could remember when streets had been for cars. Now more than half his neighborhood street was dominated by solar panels and home gardens with only a thin lane for the hood zips to navigate through. In summer, the reclaimed street was full of vegetables and flowers and buzzing bees and people sitting on benches beneath the shade of high mounted solar panels.

Ariana Brocious: So to me, that sounds kind of idyllic, and it also touches on these aspects of resilience, urban planning, food and energy supplies, public health, community. So when you're thinking about world building or designing, you know, the setting for a story, what do you think about when it's rooted in sort of a climate fiction or climate driven narrative?

Paolo Bacigalupi: So when I was writing that particular story, I was trying to imagine a world that seemed fairly equitable, humane and I think when I was trying to create that world, I was trying to describe one where there was space for human beings and the natural world to exist in some sort of integrated whole, where it wasn't simply the monoculture of sort of human concrete space, nor was it necessarily the idealized wildness of the far distant wilderness, but that there could be some sort of an integrated and mutually supporting sort of landscape and that that would encompass, you know, whether that was gardens or whether that was animals, or whether that was people, whether that was social lives, whether that was, the shelter that we need.

For, for our own comfort, but also the, the spaces to be social and connected with one another. And, you know, recognizing that human beings also thrive best when we're in contact with the natural world. I was trying to sort of bind all of that together with the idea of like, you know, where do, how do you create, energy generation patterns that make that possible and better as opposed to sort of feeling like, your coal power plant basically makes it impossible for anybody to live next to it.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, and it's a nice world and the story has tension, But I'm wondering when you're thinking of writing a story, how much does the central driving plot affect whether the world that the character is in is a more dystopian one or more utopian? Is it because they're reacting to the stimulus of their world or that they're, you know…

Paolo Bacigalupi: Right. So the way that I think about this is I think about there's, there's kinds of stories that you wanna write and some of their more warning stories. That's something like The Water Knife where I'm trying to give people a sense of unease about their future. And those warning stories, you're aiming to create an echo against their present world, that'll make them feel very uneasy. So you'll have an example like Lake Mead getting lower and lower and lower. And then in the future, what does that look like? And then, you know, when they read a news story today about Lake Mead getting lower and lower and lower, they suddenly are very unnerved. And that's, that's, you know, one version, in this, you know, sort of more inspirational line, you're trying to create a similar set of echoes. Almost always the goal is to make the background either create the enticement or the unease. That should be the background setting of the world. It's easier if the characters then just live in that background setting and conduct their human lives against that background setting, rather than them being set up as either good guys or bad guys advocating for values. That allows you a lot of freedom to tell stories without having to be sort of locked into sort of a value set fiction sort of framework.

Ariana Brocious: So in this story, in this kind of future world, renewable energy on the main grid is managed and stored via a set of weights and pulley on the sides of skyscrapers managed by artificial intelligence named Lucy. This story centers around a father and a son, and this split between a kind of hard fought, locally generated solar power and this large utility that generates power also renewably. That is a tension that exists today in our world. So tell me about the choice to include that, where it's very easy to sort of understand that the reader can get it doesn't have to imagine, uh, versus trying to incorporate maybe a, a different, more futuristic kind of technology.

Paolo Bacigalupi: One of the things that I've been really fascinated about for years, is William Gibson's quote that the future is here. It's just not very evenly distributed. And a lot of what I think of science fiction is an argument about which future is already here, just not quite evenly distributed. And so, we have big utility scale grids. We have the back to the lander type who wants to just have their little solar panel and their battery and like live off grid. You know, all of these things are in existence already and one of the things that I think is really interesting right now specifically, and partly because I'm part of a local electric co-op that's been fighting against a larger utility and had been fighting for more independence is, you know, who benefits from power generation, where that power generation comes from, what choices of the energy mix that go into that power generation. So I wanted to incorporate some of those ideas, both the insurgent power of these small technologies that are becoming more and more democratized. But also I wanted to talk about, you know, in order to make landscape level global impacts, we need big, large organizations to be organized well and skillfully. If we rely entirely on the micro consumer doing their part recycling, adding their solar panels and stuff like that. We aren't gonna get where we need to go. We need to have policies and organizations at a much, much larger scale getting on board and moving in certain directions. And the nice thing about that is that then you can do really extraordinary things. And that was one of the things I wanted to showcase in “Efficiency,” was this idea that, oh yeah, if you have a utility level storage solution, you could do something amazing. You could have all of these giant weights moving up and down the sides of buildings and have them be lit up as light displays and, and they can be storing energy, but they can also be like a visually sort of exciting thing.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. And I was really excited by this possibility of gravitricity, I think is what is what it's called, which was something I learned about reading your story I didn't actually know was a possibility. So this story is in an anthology that's focused on driving better understanding of real world climate solutions. So given that it's part of that anthology, I could imagine you feel some responsibility to help do some of that education. But speaking more broadly, is that something you feel a responsibility for? Actually helping educate readers? Or is that sort of a side thing that happens along with entertaining?

Paolo Bacigalupi: I'm a fiction writer first. I feel like my first duty always is to entertain. If I haven't sucked my reader in, if I haven't given them an interesting world to live in. If I haven't given them interesting characters to care about, all of the rest of it doesn't really matter. So entertainment first always. Then there's a question of like, are there values or ideas that I want to sort of spin out or introduce? And that's gonna depend. A lot of times it's just gonna depend on, at the short story level, it's a really different thing because oftentimes those are these very clear thought experiments where you drop an idea bomb in and you see if it explodes kind of, and so you have a lot of flexibility to sort of, get in, hit something and then jump back out. And, and I've done that with something like “Efficiency,” where you're trying to create an inspirational future. And I did another short story a while ago, which was essentially a small story about a young girl moving around and her family continually being blasted out by climate change impacts, whether that was, you know, electricity generation problems or, or hurricanes, or whether it was a financial collapse. And it kept her family moving and being chased by disasters basically. And those stories definitely, you're sort of like trying to leave people with, you know, some kind of a message. You're trying to leave people with some kind of an idea about the future. And for a while when I was writing fiction, I felt like I needed to sort of justify sort of the bourgeois luxury of just making stories up by also making them meaningful that it wasn't enough to tell an entertaining story, but it also had to carry some other larger value, weight, or idea weight. And if I wasn't doing that, then I wasn't necessarily being a good contributing member to my society in some way that I was simply being, you know, sort of a lazy, selfish jerk. I don't really believe that now. My, my world has changed. My life has changed some. and honestly like spending so much time in the, the sort of the climate change world, sort of tracking what's happening, writing stories about it, being immersed in the what ifs of it. That eventually became exhausting and overwhelming, and so I've pulled back a lot from that.

Ariana Brocious: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation with author Paolo Bacigalupi. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on topics including food, energy, EVs, activism.

Coming up, why Paolo Bacigalupi wants his readers to feel scared about the world he’s creating:

Paolo Bacigalupi: I think that if you want to create change in a democratic society, people have to believe that there is actually a threat.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

This is Climate One. Let’s get back to my conversation with speculative fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi. Reading climate news or reports day in and day out can be anxiety-provoking and emotionally draining. I asked Paolo if writing about climate is cathartic in and of itself, in helping him process the moment we’re in.

Paolo Bacigalupi: There's definitely a cathartic sort of feeling of like, oh, here's an anxiety I have. Okay, I placed it on the page. Now it's over there. It's not living inside me anymore. There was definitely a strong pattern of that where, oh yeah, I'm watching. the irrigation canal behind our house is shut off early. Okay, now I'm stressed out again. It's like, okay, now I can put that fear somewhere else. Oh, I'm noticing that, you know, the cottonwood trees aren't turning yellow at the right time of year anymore. Okay. I can put that fear somewhere else. And for sure there's, there's some quality of that where it's like, okay, I've dealt with that set of fears and I've extrapolated that out to the extent that I need to, in order to stop thinking about it to some extent.

Ariana Brocious: Do you think your writing also helps the reader do some of that, sort of navigate their own feelings around eco anxiety or grief?

Paolo Bacigalupi: I hope not. I hope I leave them so profoundly disturbed that they actually do something. I hope to wreck their home. Like, I mean, I hope to make them feel like the walls of their home are closing in on them. That nothing that they live in is stable or secure. I hope that they are horrified and think, oh, just because today looks good doesn't mean tomorrow is safe. That's what The Water Knife is for, something like that is for, is to leave them so profoundly disturbed that their home no longer feels like a safe place. And they have to start engaging with the external world that like is sending us signals all the time but we continue to find our ways to ignore that either with our, you know, our Netflix or our Instagram or whatever the thing is that's like keeping us involved in the slap fight of the moment or whatever it is, instead of like looking at the big pattern of like, where is our future headed?

Ariana Brocious: Well, I'll say The Water Knife is very effective in that way, especially if you live in the Western U.S. So I'm curious though, elsewhere in this episode we speak with Denise Baden, who's the editor of this No More Fairy Tales anthology, and she says that fear is an effective driver of plot and it can be an entertaining tool, stories that instill fear, but that overall that's counterproductive in actually generating the change we wanna see like in the climate emergency, for example. So I'm curious what you think about that perspective.

Paolo Bacigalupi: I am sympathetic to the idea. I think that if you want to create change in a democratic society, people have to believe that there is actually a threat. In order for them to believe that climate change matters, they have to extrapolate forward into what climate change is, and they have to have that grounded well enough in their world, in their physical spaces that they. It's no longer an abstraction that they think, oh, maybe in 30 years they have to think maybe my property values are gonna die in five, and that's a problem. And so we need to deal with it. If you don't make it visceral and bring it into their world, I'm not sure that you get the kind of democratic sort of upwelling of concern that moves politicians or that gets people onto electric co-op boards or planning boards or planning commissions and stuff. I think in very young people, I think that there's a stronger sense of emergency, but I think that there's a huge value in generating unease in people who are otherwise feeling like I can probably skate by. You really want to kind of illustrate like, well, what happens if our insurance industry completely collapses because we didn't do the risk analysis correct on how hurricanes and other climate emergencies are going to damage our infrastructure. You want them to feel like, oh, just because I live in a safe space doesn't mean that that actually is a safe space. You want it to impinge and impinge and impinge.

I know that some people sort of say that if you present people with a really negative future, that that either creates a sense of despair or it creates a sense that they think that that's the way it's going to go. And so they sort of start planning for that. So that's kind of where you see the preppers. Like they read enough dumb apocalypse novels. And then you have all these jacka**es out there with their canned food and their guns like planning to white knuckle it while the civilization collapses, and they become kind of a, creating their own future based on their imagination. And so I get the critique of, you know, dystopian stories or apocalyptic stories. I mean specifically apocalyptic more than, you know, dystopian. But like that these things might be bad or motivate people in bad ways or create the wrong framework for people to understand how to engage with big challenges. It's totally possible. I think though that there is this element that a well-written story of warning can create a sense of unease and a sense of awareness that otherwise doesn't exist for people. I've had readers write to me and say, I decided not to move to Phoenix because of your book. And you're like, good. You shouldn't move to Phoenix. It's not a sustainable space. Like it's not being designed in a sustainable way. That means something finally to them. And so that means that they're suddenly alert and engaged in a way that they weren't before. So I don't dismiss the critique of, you know, dystopian fiction or negative stories or unpleasant future stories, but I don't think it's an encompassing critique. I don't think it's the only, you know, way to look at those things. And I don't think it's the only outcome.

Ariana Brocious: Well, so as we wrap up here, we've talked about. The value you see in painting dystopian futures and how that can serve as motivation. But a lot of the things that we've, the stories we've been talking about today are set in what I would call like, you know, the near future. So they're not really, really far, they feel kind of like maybe a few decades out. And I'm wondering with a sort of more hopeful framing, do you think by setting these stories in that. Not so far away future, you give the reader maybe a little bit more boost toward, I dunno, a stronger sense of agency or a drive to act because either they feel the pressure of like, oh my gosh, it's getting scary, this is coming right now, or, oh, I see that this world that you've painted that's utopian isn't actually that hard and we could actually achieve it.

Paolo Bacigalupi: So speaking specifically about trying to create positive futures and trying to create inspirational futures, I think that there's a quality where you do want to be thinking about attainability and you also want to think about not creating a consolatory future, like one that tells you that it all works out. Somehow in the future we have, you know, magic power that runs everything. And magic, clean power makes everything magical. And I think that science fiction, that's one of the dangers actually of writing sort of like positive fiction or even future fiction of any kind that assumes that the human race continues is fairly optimistic in a lot of ways. And so if you write a story that says we live on Mars, or you used to write a story that says, oh, all of these other things have happened, it sort of ignores the gap that we have to make it across. And so I think that, yeah, if you're gonna write inspirational fiction about the human race surviving and thriving, that you do want to kind of make it within the near range of where we're at so that it actually reflects back on us and actually, you know, is understandable. And so yeah, no, I think it's very important that you tell that story in a way that it feels relatable and, and relatively close and, and engages with the, the present infrastructure that we have and the present world that we have as well. And doesn't live in denial of, well, we're starting from here. We need to get to there.

Ariana Brocious: Something that we can achieve. We have yeah, a path forward, right?

Paolo Bacigalupi: Very much.

Ariana Brocious: Paolo Bacigalupi is an award-winning international bestselling author of speculative fiction, including The Water Knife, the Windup Girl, and many more. Paolo, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Paolo Bacigalupi: You bet. Thank you.

Greg Dalton: As we mentioned, Paolo’s story, “Efficiency,” appeared in the anthology “No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet.” Denise Baden [BAY-den], a sustainability professor in the UK, edited the anthology. For years she’s been running the Green Stories fiction competitions and written her own climate fiction. Given that so much climate information is based on scientific reports, I asked her how storytelling can reach people in a way that data can’t.

Denise Baden: Well, I found it myself just being a writer. Sometimes when I'm trying to explain an idea and you're trying to say how it affects different kinds of people in different situations, it comes across quite quickly as boring and tedious.

When you write it into a story, then it's part of the plot and you can actually show climate solutions and how they might affect real people. So it might be, say, public transport replacing private cars. How might that affect someone with children? How might it affect a commuter, how might it, you know, affect different kinds of people?

So, you can show it through their everyday lives. So it's entertaining. And you can identify with it. The wonderful thing about fiction is you are entering into someone else's world and you are experiencing the world as they experience it. So it's a lovely way rather than talking in dry terms about stakeholder analysis, you can show it and showing is always more entertaining than telling.

Greg Dalton: Right. That's what they teach you in high school writing. What makes fiction so powerful? I guess, you know, you're entering that world of someone else and perhaps it's because of that character attachment that we don't have perhaps in the news.

Denise Baden: The thing is about climate fiction, it tends to raise awareness of what is wrong. And of course that's a necessary step, but it's certainly not sufficient. And I've done a fair bit of research into this and how people respond to climate change communications and positive stories with solutions, whether it be in the field of news or education or fiction, actually engage way more people than more catastrophic tales of what will go wrong if we don't do anything. Some people are engaged by that. But just as many people are switched off, they might feel manipulated or they'll go into denial or they'll feel guilty, or they'll just feel scared.

And all these responses are quite rational responses to have in the face of something that is quite scary. So if you just put out the problems, I see it as revving an engine engine without being in gear. You're kind of creating quite a lot of negativity, but you're not really going anywhere. So I've had research where I've exposed people to flash fiction, positive solution focused or more catastrophic focused. And the results were really clear. The more negative ones raised awareness, but if they did lead to any behavioral intentions, it was more like something should be done. Whereas the ones where you show characters actually doing something or you show solutions, it leads very much more to, oh, right, I can see what I can do. I will now do this. So I like a more positive approach, because I think you engage a wider audience, and it's just been shown to be more effective. The kinds of behaviors you might get just by scaring people probably aren't the ones that these climate fiction authors are hoping for. You know, they're just as likely to go off and, and buy up all the toilet rolls in the supermarket or get themselves some guns or go massively anti-immigration or self-protective. Because that's how we tend to respond when they're scared. Whereas when you make people see what can be done, they feel much more expansive and it leads to much more proactive positive behavior change.

Greg Dalton: That fear triggers our lizard brain, which wants us to kind of store food and guns or go to some dark places though clearly doom and denial, I've heard people say, seem to sell. There's two ways that activate clicks and activity. One is the doom you're talking about and the other is the denial. And that's certainly where we've seen Hollywood and feature films. In your editor's note for No More Fairy Tales, you write, “this anthology has a clear purpose to inspire readers with positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like and how we might get there.”

Without sounding a little jaded myself, some of those stories read a little kind of rosy, optimistic, uh, and make me wonder if readers might sort of say, Ugh, you know, that's Pollyannish. We're not gonna get there. What do you think about that?

Denise Baden: So, I've come across this term through-topia. We know dystopia. I think most films and books set in the future are dystopian. We've heard about utopia, which is kind of unrealistic. I love the term through-topia because what it does, it allows us to imagine what a sustainable society might be like if we do it well and then works backwards from there to show you how you might get there. So we already know a lot of the solutions. And these solutions are all in No More Fairy Tales. They're carbon drawdown, whether it's through nature-based means, sea grass, kelp tree planting, or direct air capture and storage. It's through trying to reduce consumption. Or high carbon consumption. And there's a number of ways you can do that. Personal carbon allowances or personal carbon trading, green taxation. Switching our metric from the gross domestic product, which measures basically consumption and production to say a wellbeing index. Some countries are doing that now and we have a big call for that in, in the UK. So there's all these kinds of different solutions. We've got one story in there. Give the Ocean Nation status and then allow it to charge for its services. So some of them are quite radical, some of them are really going on at the moment and we're just drawing them to attention. Some of them are cultural. But when you look at the utopian idea, you have to look at the order in which you do things. So one story in there is set in the citizen's jury. It's called “The Assassin.” And it's eight people in a citizen's assembly kind of thing, and they're debating climate solutions. And then there's a murder. So the murder is the entertaining bit. It's the who done it. It pulls people in, but it gives you an opportunity to debate these climate solutions and be exposed to them. But the biggest climate solution of all is that democratic process. The citizens assemblies. So we've known for decades, haven't we, what we need to do. And we've had the ability to do it, you know, for a couple of decades. Although we've, we've got much better, but we haven't. And part of that is our democratic system ties us to electoral cycles. It incentivizes short-term thinking. It's subject to vested interests, so all of these things make it very difficult. I personally believe our democratic system is constitutionally incapable of prioritizing climate crisis over things like jobs or more immediate ones, but the citizens assemblies, there's been so much research done now and they're really taking off. I mean, in Europe, they're doing brilliantly. In Northern Ireland, in the UK, I've got a climate assembly going on at the moment, but where I live, they have now been shown that if you give people access to independent information, you give them time away from their job and family to debate it. They will come up with good, well considered, informed long-term decisions. The only issue is that in most countries, they don't have power.

Greg Dalton: That seems like a key. Seems like a key one. Yes.

Denise Baden: So for me, that's a key solution. And a lot of other solutions like renewable energy, require us incentives. So we could, for example, adopt a more sharing economy. Not everything we use, almost everything we use isn't being used at any given moment. You know, how often are we actually in our car? There's all kinds of fashion swap and libraries and driving apps that enable you to share, but the incentives aren't there. If you had something like a personal carbon allowance where if you had a certain amount and if you went over, you'd pay extra, suddenly all these different sharing apps would get massive support and then they'd be able to deliver a great service, a great public transport service because it would get that, it would go past that tipping point. It would drive innovation into sustainable technology and practices and products. So I would dispute that any of the solutions in there are pollyannaish, I think we just need to do them in the right order. Push the levers in, in the right place.

Greg Dalton: At the end of each story you include a link to information. How do you gauge the success or outcomes of this anthology and its related educational materials and stories? We hear this all the time, you know, some people say the same thing about podcasts. How does the world change? So what? People read a story, listen to a podcast.

Denise Baden: Okay, so I've got a couple examples for you. One of the short stories is adapted from my first novel Habitat Man, which is based on a real garden consultant who gave up his job in the city to help make people's gardens wildlife friendly. And he falls in love and he digs up a body. So there's a romance, there's a mystery. So I condensed the sort of turning point into a short story, but I have research from the book where we had 50 readers. And we asked them to read the book and then report on how their practices changed. And then we went back to them a month later and 98% had adopted at least one green alternative as a result of reading the book. So common ones were obviously things to do with what you do in your backyards, but there were also things like, with the body, I used it as an excuse to talk about natural burials and I had several people write to me saying they've changed their will to specify a natural burial.

Because actually your traditional burials with your mahogany hardwood coffins, you know, and the cremation are really high carbon versus natural burials. I created a lovely scene where people were moved to think, that's what I'd like to do.

When I was writing the natural burial chapter, my mom actually was dying. So I think that lent an air of poignancy to it. And when I buried my mom, I did exactly what I did in the book. We had a woven willow coffin. We planted her in the ground, no formaldehyde, which poisons the earth. We just let the ecosystem do its bit and planted a tree there and trees grow really well in that environment. So it made me feel better feeling my mother was sort of nourishing the ecosystem rather than destroying it.

And another example, and I still have to see how this one pans out. I guess one of the more out there ideas in No More Fairy Tales stories to say the planet was the idea of giving the ocean nation status.

Greg Dalton: Oh, I liked this part in the book.

Denise Baden: Yeah. Well, there's many things. I mean, there's many countries now beginning to, I think there's rivers who've been given nation status in New Zealand. I think Ethiopia's done something. So that was the idea. And we opened it up in one story. We showed how it had developed in another, and then we do a 60 years on what it now looks like. And the person who really was the driving force, Steve Willis, behind this one. He was at the Ocean Summit last December and he was talking about it and he got a lot of traction and they said, right, that needs to go on the agenda at the next World Ocean Summit. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing if anything happens from that. I mean, it won't happen exactly the way in the book, but it planted a seed and I'm yet to see how it grows.

Greg Dalton: Denise Baden is Professor of Sustainable Business at the University of South Hampton and Leader of the Green Stories Project. We've been talking about No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet. Thanks so much, Denise, for coming on Climate One.

Denise Baden: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Greg Dalton: Coming up, an effort to make climate fiction more diverse and intersectional:

Tory Stephens: The genre is changing, but many of the stories I read did not have frontline community members where the climate impacts are really impacting their life right now. So I really wanted those folks to be represented.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. We’re talking about climate fiction as a way to understand and inspire solutions.

Ariana Brocious: The nonprofit online news outlet Grist has been running a climate fiction competition for the last three years. We’re going to hear an excerpt from one of the winning pieces, called “The Cloud Weaver's Song,” written by Saul Tanpepper and recorded by Curio.

There was once a beautiful city called Asmara, high on the Kebessa Plateau, a mile and half into the sky. Asmara was a wondrous place, where for a hundred thousand years the clouds drenched the air each night and rains nourished the soil. The rivers that flowed down its escarpments fed the lowlands and eventually emptied into the sea.

The ancient name Asmara comes from the phrase arbate asmera, which in the original Tigrinya means "the four women who made them unite." Many centuries before, this land had been under constant threat from a common enemy. Now, as before, it was the women who brought the clans together to defend against this new danger. For a while, Asmara became a sanctuary to anyone seeking refuge from the Great Drying.

But the heat and drought were unrelenting foes, and they drove more and more people to the city on the plateau. Week after week they came. Year after year. And because there was only so much land to hold them all, war became inevitable. For a hundred years, the fighting waged.

Now, just as there is no amount of conflict, no matter how bitterly fought, which can alter the course of nature, no volume of human blood could quench the thirst of the Great Drying. The deserts continued to expand, spreading until they reached the very ankles of the beloved city on the plateau.

It is said that necessity makes us do what we must in order to survive. Eventually, the rains began to evaporate before ever reaching the ground, and the rivers dried long before spilling into the sea. So, the women of Asmara rose again and taught themselves how to harvest the nightly mists with threads spun from molten glass. For a while, it helped.

But the thirst of the Great Drying was like that of the hyena’s: never slaked. Not satisfied with stealing the fogs from all the lands beneath Asmara’s feet, it reached up and took them from her, too.

Once more, necessity made the people do what they must in order to survive. The peaceful Afar had long since retreated into the clouds by building towers that reached even higher than the Kebessa Plateau. Now it was their brothers’ and sisters’ houses burning to the ground. And so they welcomed them all into the sky, where the mists were still plentiful and ripe for harvesting.

Semhar Ibrahim was a weaver of webs. Each night, she assumed the skin of a spider and set out from her little hole to spin her delicate threads. High above the ground, where the clouds formed, she carefully laid out line after endless line, each one as thin as a hair and as long as a mile. To harvest the dew that condensed upon them, she gently plucked each string, sending them vibrating along their entire length. Each wire carried its own unique note, and when played altogether they sang the song of the Weavers. As the droplets traveled down the wires, they merged and grew fat, creating a delicate river suspended in the sky. This is how the people harvested the clouds so that all might live. And each night, when you heard the tune, you would know how heavily laden the wires were with mist, depending on how melodious or melancholic the notes sounded.

Ariana Brocious: That was an excerpt of the audio recording of the fictional story “The Cloud Weaver’s Song” by Saul Tanpepper. Find a link to the full print and audio story in the show notes on our website. Tory Stephens is climate fiction creative manager at Grist, where he’s been running the climate fiction contest called “Imagine 2200.”

He says the concept originated out of a pandemic-era Grist retreat for folks they call “fixers” – climate solutions professionals from across all different fields. Over the course of three days they envisioned pathways to different climate futures, laying out a timeline of the next 180 years.

Tory Stephens: We stuck people in cohorts or five and essentially they plotted a way to get to a clean green and just future by 2200. And so, you looked at these timelines after with their visions and ideas and moments and their timelines were so rich and they weren't just about climate, they were intersectional. And they were so much on the social justice side of things about abolition, about rewilding and the land back movement for indigenous folks and reparations for Black folk. And so, when we walked away and kind of digested all the different timelines that these folks put together, what we saw was that there's a lot of climate fiction that doesn't pull in this kind of social justice angle.

So we knew that when we did climate fiction at Grist, we wanted to infuse it and make sure that the prompts and the architecture of what we're asking for in our stories has that intersectionality has those other issues that frontline communities care about.

Ariana Brocious: Let me jump in here because this is a perfect pivot to the next question. So, the contest rules for this fiction writing contest state “Imagine 2200 was inspired and informed by literary movements like Afro futurism and Indigenous, Latinx, Asian disabled, queer and feminist futurism, along with Hope Punk and solar punk. We hope writers of all genres look to these movements for inspiration and urge writers within these communities to submit stories.”

And I wanted to read that because I think it's important that that's actually explicitly stated in your brief, essentially. So tell us more about that focus on intersectionality of climate impacts, not just the writers that you're seeking to hear from, but the stories that they're telling. Why is that so critical?

Tory Stephens: Yeah, I think it's really critical because that's the lived experience that these folks have on the ground. You know, when you are a queer person from Louisiana, a black queer person from Louisiana, you can't just separate those different identities that you have intertwined and that make up you. And so we want characters that are rich and layered like that because those are the people that are living like the first piece is that. We wanna see everyone reflected in this fight for a better climate, right? And so what I found when I was reading a lot of climate fiction, and this is changing, I would say, but you know, just reading through the genre, I found a lot of stories where I sometimes I call the characters Lego people. And what I mean by that is that a person, their identity is just, it's about the world building and what they're going through, and less about the identity of the person and how they would react to the world that they're moving through. So you could pop off the head and put it on another person, and their gender wouldn't matter too much. The story wouldn't change too much. The cultural things that they may have in their life, the food they eat, the landscape that they live in. All those things wouldn't change that much because the author is trying to get across like the plot of the world. But for us, the character is who's moving through that world and the part for us that's really interesting is their identity. The genre is changing, but many of the stories I read did not have frontline community members. You know, folks that are living in the Caribbean, folks that are living in New Orleans, right on like the water's edge and other spaces where the climate impacts are really impacting their life right now. So I really wanted those folks to be represented. And also the call is also to put out the bat signal to be like, Hey, this is a safe space for you to write your stories, write your heart out, send them to us. We want those kind of stories.

Ariana Brocious: That's great. So Grist is an independent nonprofit news outlet focused on climate solutions and a just future. How does leading a climate fiction contest fit in with that news and journalistic mission?

Tory Stephens: Yeah, that's a great question. It's one that I got from the upper folks at management here when we were first launching this. Grist is great at news. It wins awards, people are using our stuff in academic research. Politicians use it to kind of make their case on the hill sometimes. And so, the thing we did notice though, is that we've talked and we've done polls and we''re engaged with our audience and one of the things that we found is that there's folks who just don't like the news.

They wouldn't be our audience, but there's folks out there that we've come across that are just said, the news is so bleak that I just don't engage with it. And it's kind of interesting when I hear that because we often lead from a solutions angle and a hope angle and like a can-do attitude, but still the kind of news itself has been painted by these folks as like a place that they don't wanna spend their time because it's negative.

Maybe they're just bored by the news. Like it's just not the way they get their orientation. And so what we found is that, so many people are story driven. So we wanna reach all people around the climate crisis and talk about climate solutions, the hope and justice side of things. And yeah, news is where we started, but we would also like to reach all these folks in the literary community. And sometimes that overlaps with like, there could be a news junkie and also in the literary community. There's these people who just would rather read a really beautiful story that articulates the world that we want in need and that can help them kind of envision how they wanna plot their next, you know, life choice or even just have a nice story to read.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, that resonates a lot. I mean, I'm someone who reads a lot of news during the day for my job, and then at night I cannot, I just read fiction because I just wanna escape. And it doesn't mean it's always uplifting. You know, fiction has a lot of tension and moods and things, but yeah, I just cannot sort of be in the real world anymore.

Tory Stephens: It's often misunderstood that Imagine 2200 is like focused on utopia. And I would say that our stories are not just utopian stories. They're sometimes through-topia, which is like more of a new term that's coming out of the UK where, you know, it's showing how you get to that other side, or in the midst of changing and going towards like a world that is full of abundance, hope and justice. And then also we have like ones that are questionable how hopeful they are. They do have hope. They just have hope that looks very different than what a western kind of eye sees as naming hope.

Ariana Brocious: There are other restorative themes running through some of the winning pieces like LGBTQ, acceptance and interspecies respect. So I'm wondering if you've heard from the writers or just as an editor reading them how you think writing the stories for the writer themselves might make them more hopeful about these various futures climate particularly, but these other important aspects as well.

Tory Stephens: Yeah. I love that you asked that question because that is like the, I guess I'll call it a wild card. It's the part when I was envisioning like we, I had the audience in mind, when I was building this was about how it would be received in the world and how would people read the stories? And I had a lot of anxiety about that because it's a brand new thing that we were launching. And you know, what I've come to learn is that we've had a real big impact on the folks that are engaged with us from the writer side of the community. You know, many folks reach out to us and say, I have been writing dystopian stories for so long, it's like second nature, that's the way, that's my clarion call to the world on how we get this right. And I hadn't spent a lot of time envisioning, what if we get this right? Like, what would that world look like? So yeah, a lot of the writers will say that they haven't really spent time envisioning a future that is, you know, working for us. And so, I think it is, it's such a powerful thing for that side of things.'cause again, like I said, it's like a wild card. I didn't even think that. So now just to do the numbers, we've had almost 3000 stories submitted over three years. We're in touch with those writers. We shuttle and put opportunities in front of them that we come across, because we're now connected with a lot of different writing communities. And this is kind of like the tough part about Imagine is we only publish 12 stories out of, you know, this year we got a thousand, we're gonna publish 12. So we really want to help those, like I would say that there's hundreds of great stories out there, some that need a little bit more help. So we try to send them resources for where they could, you know, workshop that story. And then others where it's just not the right fit for what we're doing. But it's an incredible story. So we encourage them, Hey, like you don't have a bad story here. You just don't have an Imagine style story that we're looking for based on the prompt that we put out to the world.

And so we encourage them to submit their story elsewhere because I mean there have been some brilliant stories that when I'm looking through our files, I've reread myself, you know, I'm like, oh, is this the work? It is the work. But yeah, when I'm looking at a story from year one that I really hope is like being published somewhere else. It gives me all the feels.

Ariana Brocious: What was the most surprising interpretation of our future that you've read so far from the submissions?

Tory Stephens: Ooh, that's a really good question. I think I'm gonna go with the, the Greenland shark, the um, the last of the Greenland sharks, because it was really hard for me to see the hope in that story.

Ariana Brocious: And I'll jump in and just tell listeners that the story is sort of, it focuses on the four remaining individuals of species on earth, right?

Tory Stephens: Yes. Yes. And they have a psychic connection with each other. but like it is, it is very bleak. Four individuals left, right? And so, wow, it was really hard for me to find the hope in that, you know? I mean, I think that story did a lot of work in having me reflect on what hope means, and it just opened the door for that. Hope to me now is a word that needs to live in a space between me and other people. So what I mean by that is that, and this might sound weird, but I want to ask people, what does hope look like to you?

And then I want to have a conversation. I think we need to have more conversations around what hope looks like, because I think it can be quite superficial, even for myself at certain times. And I think I've deepened the level of understanding I have of the word hope by talking with people and being in community with people and explicitly being like, let's talk about hope and what it means to you. I believe that hope is something that you have to explore collectively.

Ariana Brocious: That's wonderful. I think we'll leave it there. Tory Stephens is Climate Fiction Creative Manager at Grist. Tory, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Tory Stephens: Thank you.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One, we’ve been talking about fairy tales and fear in climate fiction narratives.

Ariana Brocious: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. On our new website you can create and share playlists focused on topics including food, energy, EVs, activism. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Greg Dalton: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young. Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

3:30 Paolo Bacigalupi on the climate realities behind "The Water Knife"
9:30 World-building for a more humane, equitable future in fiction
13:00 Future tech versus today’s technologies
18:00 Writing as catharsis for climate anxiety
20:00 Whether fear or hope is more effective in driving action
26:30 Denise Baden on power of storytelling to reach people more than data
28:33 Dystopian stories are like “revving an engine without being in gear”
30:45 Concept of "through-topia"
39:00 Excerpt of "The Cloud Weaver’s Song" short story
45:45 Tory Stephens on why intersectional climate fiction is essential
49:00 How storytelling can reach many people beyond "news junkies"

Play

Navigating Science and Feelings on a Destabilized Planet

BenTestani — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 20:28:08 +0000

Navigating Science and Feelings on a Destabilized Planet

08/18/2023

This year is shaping up to be the hottest year in 125,000 years. It may also be the coolest year a child born today will ever see. The climate crisis is playing out differently across the globe, but regardless of where you live, you are likely feeling its impacts.

Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis served as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, which itemizes in great detail the state of the climate. She says working with peers across the world gave her a greater, and scarier, understanding of our current moment.

“I think many of us as research scientists, we understand the conditions that our own region is experiencing, but when you actually stop to piece it all together to get a global perspective, that's when I think for me, something really clicked and I realized that things are actually a lot worse than the average person realizes.”

It can be hard to carry that knowledge. And scientists are generally expected to be rational and not bring their feelings into their work, even as they struggle to process their own feelings about the world we’re headed into. Gergis says it doesn’t have to be one or the other, though.

“I really feel that it is possible to be rational and objective and professional, but still be a human being and say, okay, well this is the state of the climate crisis that we're facing right now. I do feel feelings of grief and anger and frustration around that.”

Gergis says we need to trust climate scientists – the experts who have devoted their life’s work to this crisis – and get more people of all stripes to engage with action and solutions, recognizing that the people and places they love are under threat.

“I don't think people can make an emotional connection with renewable energy targets, to be honest. But they can make a connection with, say, a beautiful, local beach that they visit or a forest that they love, or a particularly important hiking trail or whatever it is for that particular region or that particular person.” And Gergis says she finds hope in knowing that we have collective power to make big, meaningful changes.

“Remember that our politicians are responding to us as voters, and companies are responding to us as consumers. So we actually have enormous power, political power, and consumer power to provide or remove the social license for the continued exploitation of our planet.”

For many young people, worries about the climate crises have centered around the question of whether or not to conceive children. It’s a complicated and personal issue – not unique to this generation perhaps, but challenging all the same.

“You worry that your child will have an impact on the planet, but you also worry about the planet's impact on your child,” says science writer Elizabeth Rush.

In “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth,” she documents her journey to Antactica’s Thwaites Glacier, known as the “Doomsday Glacier” as she contemplates what it would mean for her to have a child at this time of radical planetary change.

“[Thwaites Glacier] is considered sort of ground zero for the potential for catastrophic sea level rise this century. Thwaites alone contains two feet of potential sea level rise, and it acts as a kind of cork to the West Antarctic ice sheet, which if we lose that, could raise global sea levels 10 feet or more,” Rush says.

Rush says even as she learned more about the critical and threatened climate-stabilizing presence of Antarctica, she sees a hopeful path forward. It depends on humans remembering that we’re a part of nature, not separate from the natural world that supports and nurtures us.

“Climate change is teaching us the fallacy of that kind of thinking, and I hope that it is re-enlivening our attention to the more than human world…. I don't know how the story ends, but I do think that I see reason for hope despite the dire circumstances, and I think it has to do with kind of mending that relationship as best we can.”

Guests

Elizabeth Rush

Author, The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth

Joëlle Gergis

IPCC Climate Scientist, author, Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope

The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth (milkweed.org)

Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope (islandpress.org)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One, I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: This year is shaping up to be the hottest year in 125,000 years. It may also be the coolest year a child born today will ever see. It’s hard to get my head around that.

Ariana Brocious: It’s hard to hear it. It sounds scary. Not something I really want to think about.

Greg Dalton: The climate crisis is playing out differently across the globe, but regardless of where you live, you are likely feeling its impacts, big and small.

Ariana Brocious: And it’s hard to go even a day without seeing something in the news related to the climate crisis: the recent fires in Hawaii, which were super destructive and very scary. And then the good news out of Montana, where youth were successful in their case against the state for not considering climate impacts. There’s a lot to deal with right now.

Greg Dalton: It’s quite an emotional roller coaster. Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis served as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, which itemizes in great detail the state of the climate.

Joëlle Gergis: And I think many of us as research scientists, we understand the conditions that our own region is experiencing, but when you actually stop to piece it all together to get a global perspective, that's when I think for me, something really clicked,and I realized that things are actually a lot worse than the average person realizes.

Ariana Brocious: It can be hard to carry that understanding of the data. And scientists are generally expected to be rational and not bring their feelings into their work, and that’s also hard.

Greg Dalton: Still, scientists and others also struggle to process their own feelings about the world we’re entering now.

Joëlle Gergis: But I really feel that it is possible to be rational and objective and professional, but still be a human being and say, okay, well this is the state of the climate crisis that we're facing right now. And I do feel feelings of grief and anger and frustration around that.

Ariana Brocious: And it’s not just scientists, obviously. For many people of my generation and younger, worries about the climate crises have centered around the question of whether or not to conceive children. It’s a complicated and deeply personal issue – not unique to this generation perhaps, but challenging all the same.

Elizabeth Rush: You worry that your child will have an impact on the planet, but you also worry about the planet's impact on your child.

Greg Dalton: That’s a lot to consider. In “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth,” science writer Elizabeth Rush documents her journey to Antactica’s “Doomsday Glacier” as she contemplates what it would mean for her to have a child at this time of radical planetary change.

Ariana Brocious: This journey was unusual. Rush learned she had an opportunity to join a research vessel named the Palmer where she would be traveling with dozens of strangers to one of the most isolated parts of the world for a couple months.

Elizabeth Rush: To be perfectly honest, I don't think I understood the true circumstances that I would be in when the opportunity came up. I had been writing about sea level rise for about a decade at that point, and the more I learned about Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, the more profoundly I wanted to go there. It's considered sort of ground zero for the potential for catastrophic sea level rise this century. Thwaites alone contains two feet of potential sea level rise, and it acts as a kind of cork to the West Antarctic ice sheet, which if we lose that, could raise global sea levels 10 feet or more. Something I didn't understand even after covering climate for many, many years, was that a lot of IPCC climate models around sea level rise, for the longest time, didn't take West Antarctica into account. Because we have next to no observational data from there. In the 2000s and 2010s, when we're thinking about, you know, oh, is it three feet of sea level rise, or four or five feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, a lot of those models don't take Thwaites into account, they don't take West Antarctica into account. And so, this glacier is really deeply important for its potentiality to fundamentally kind of shift the scale and the rate at which we understand that sea level could rise, but no one before our mission and the history of the planet had been to the place where the glacier discharges ice into the sea.

Ariana Brocious: You told friends you were joining this expedition and one of them suggested that you take self-defense classes. Another sent you an article about a professor who had taunted and degraded his female PhD student while at sea. Give us a sense of what it felt like to be a woman aboard this ship and the dynamics that played out in that way.

Elizabeth Rush: Well, I think in order to give you kind of a sense of what it felt like to be on this boat, I think I need to talk about how exceptional it is that women are working in Antarctica, in and around Antarctica. Something that I didn't understand until I started to learn more about Antarctica was that the first human being to see Antarctica saw. This continent in 1820, we think it was a seal hunter named Nathaniel Palmer. And, he was there, you know, looking for oil in the form of seal blubber. And I suddenly realized that all of the firsthand accounts we have of it, all of the true stories that are linked to humans there have been written or told in the last 200 years, and the overwhelming majority of them are tied up in stories of imperial conquest and extraction. And they're overwhelmingly penned by white men from the global north. It's really not until like 30 years ago that you start to see an uptick of women making their way to the ice and gender non-binary people. And so to this day, a lot of the culture in and around Antarctica still has a lot of this sort of like masculine bravado and daring do. And the National Science Foundation just released a report, I believe last year that I think it's like 79% of women and gender non-binary people report facing sexual harassment on the ice. So, my guard was up, is how I would describe it when I stepped on board that icebreaker. We had near gender parity amongst the scientists, but if you include all of the people on the boat, it was more like a third of the people aboard were women. And I was actually really thrilled by that number. It was a lot higher than it is in most missions. I wrote a note in my journal, you know, be guarded. I tend to be a pretty open, enthusiastic person. But I walked into the mission very aware of this kind of history of gendered exclusion on the ice, and I just wanted to do what I could to take care of myself.

Ariana Brocious: Did you end up taking a self-defense class?

Elizabeth Rush: I did not end up taking a self-defense class. I have done a lot of field work in remote sites before and I have faced sexual harassment in other situations. And so at some level, this also didn't feel new to me. It feels like something that in many ways has defined my professional life, throughout my entire career, and it's just something that we don't talk that much about.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, which is really gutting to hear, and I know you're not alone in that. A lot of women face discrimination, harassment and a lot of things in the sciences in particular. Before you set out on this federally funded research trip, you had to fill out 40 pages of paperwork. And you say that on page eight, there was one thin line that read pelvic exam. You learned pregnant women, pregnant people are not allowed on these trips. So what was your reaction when you learned that?

Elizabeth Rush: Well, when I was invited on this trip, I was right at a moment in my life when I had decided that I really wanted to become a parent. And it was the first time in my adult life where I had, you know, a stable, loving relationship and a paycheck. And I had been working towards that sense of stability for a long time. So at a personal level, my heart sunk a little bit. It was like, you know, I got invited on this mission fully eight or nine months before we embarked. So choosing to be a part of it meant putting off, trying for basically a full year. I was at the time, 35, and you know, that number is bandied about as a threshold after which your fertility can start to drop. I've since learned that it's probably a couple years later than that, but for me it felt like, okay, you know, if I choose to go on this mission, am I really undermining my chances of getting pregnant? And I would be lying if I said I didn't feel frustrated to the point of anger at some of those rules. I also, you know, tried to reason with myself and was like, well, you probably don't wanna have morning sickness and throw up on a glacier. That's probably not pleasant. But also like, why is it that we can't support pregnant people on the ice? We can support all of these other extravagant undertakings. So it felt like a continuation of that historic gendered exclusion.

Ariana Brocious: And I wanna talk about that conundrum that you found yourself in, of deciding that you were going to have children and that had actually been something that took you a while to settle on. So can you tell us a bit about the thought process that you had prior to deciding that, you know, you did wanna have kids and how climate was a part of that decision?

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah, I mean, I've been writing about climate change and when I say writing about it, you know, I've spent most of my energies up until this mission interviewing members of frontline communities about the ways in which climate change and sort of structural violence overlap in their lives and the things they've decided to do about that overlap. And that's meant, you know, talking to a lot of flood survivors and folks who've lost people in floods, folks who've lost homes. So for me, climate change has never really been or hasn't been for a long time something that's going to happen in the future. I've known it to be something happening now and accelerating and worsening now. I wanted to have a child. And I also felt tremendously guilty for a long time about that desire because, you know, as a white woman from the global North, you hear about it and you're like, oh, well am I just gonna, you know, contribute to fossil fuel extraction by having another kid, by putting another human being on this planet who lives in a deeply consumer society. But I carried the desire to have a child onto the boat, and I also carried an openness to having that desire change because of the mission. It was sort of like, I don't have a kid yet. I haven't fully committed yet. What do I need to think through even more fully to understand, you know, if and whether I can commit to having a kid. And so the mission became kind of like an opportunity or a stage to continue thinking about child rearing on a changing planet.

Ariana Brocious: Well, let's do that a little. So simply by existing and being a resident of the global north, as you said, we all have a climate impact, and that happens upon giving birth to a new child. They will definitely have an impact. That's just a fact. How big is negotiable depending on, on, on climate lifestyle. But still those of us that live in this part of the world do have bigger climate impacts than others. And you point out an estimate that 422,000 gallons of diesel was burned by the Palmer, just getting to the glacier and back, and that that alone will melt 13 square kilometers of the ice that the team is there to study. So there are impacts even to learning more and trying to better understand the position that we're in. So how do you think about the impact of your choices?

Elizabeth Rush: It's a great question and it definitely makes me think about a really specific piece of information that I encountered a couple years ago. In particular, I came across it in a really fabulous essay by Mian Christ called, is it Still Okay to Have a Child? And she writes about how this thing that we call like carbon footprint. The carbon footprint and carbon footprint calculators was really popularized by British Petroleum in 2005. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a multivalent ad campaign across the United States on television, on bus stops and newspapers. And these ads were really simple. They said, you know, what is a carbon footprint? Everybody has one. Go to our website to figure out what yours is. And, you know, they're so ubiquitous today. We all know what carbon footprint calculators are and we think in carbon footprint calculus, You know, how much CO2 can I keep in the ground by becoming a vegan? How much CO2 can I keep in the ground by getting an electric car? All of this, this logic, this rhetoric around calculating your personal impact on the planet is really a smart and devastating tactic by the fossil fuel industry to blame shift onto individuals and to say it's you through your individual consumption, consumptive actions that are making this problem, you're making it worse. And the best way that you can combat it is to shift those individual actions and increasingly we see children, offspring in these carbon footprint calculators and you know, the number that's often bandied about is that if you have one less child, you'll keep 60 tons of CO2 sequestered in the ground. Not only do I have a problem with the fossil fuel industry impacting my decisions around reproduction. I also have a problem with just the comparison that buying a Chevy Bolt or a Jetta is somehow equivalent to, or the same kind of decision as choosing to have a kid or not. I think there's a really fundamental categorical error there. And something that you never see in these calculators is the idea that collective action can keep CO2 in the ground. Right? So this really amazing activist, Blythe Papino would say to me, you know, it's never in those calculators, the fact that if you got together with, a dozen people and you shut down a small coal fired power plant for a single day, you'd also keep 60 tons of CO2 in the ground. So I feel like as I encountered that information, most of the guilt, if not all of the guilt I felt around simply wanting to have a child went away, and was pretty immediately transformed into a kind of rage at the time and energy I had lost feeling that way. And rage that other young people also are, you know, caught in this quagmire that is being constructed so that these corporate entities can continue to extract at really high rates without being held accountable for that. And the last thing I wanna say is also, you know, when you say 60 tons of CO2 is gonna be the amount of CO2 that your offspring pump into the atmosphere, that assumes a world in which our present day fossil fuel dependency continues. And I know so many people who are actively fighting for a world that doesn't look like that. And so it really assumes a continuation of a world order that we know we are actively, so many people are trying to move away from.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about navigating science and feelings around climate. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods.

Coming up, the power of birth stories.

Elizabeth Rush: Everyone has come here through the generous gift of someone else's body. And I think that's something that's really important to talk about like deep interconnection, not just amongst human beings, but also ecosystems and a planetary web of life that includes ice and rock and ocean as actors. So I think talking about birth in this kind of universal way has that power.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. Let’s get back to my conversation with Elizabeth Rush, author of “The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth.” She takes us to one particular morning aboard the ship Palmer.

Elizabeth Rush: I remember waking up and going up to the bridge. And being like, wow, it's so beautiful and there's so many icebergs everywhere. And I took all these photos and I was just like, what a gorgeous day. It had been so gray and so overcast and this felt just really different. I went downstairs, I did some interviews, I did some transcription, and after lunch the chief scientist is in the lab and he's compulsively clicking back between back and forth between two satellite images of our work area, which is about 15 miles wide, and I don't know, like 15 miles deep, more or less, maybe it's like 30 miles deep. Because we had ocean and ice shelf. And in the first image, Thwaites Glacier, the ice shelf of Thwaites Glacier is like this solid whole thing. And in the second image, it looks like someone took a hammer to a windshield and like broke it up into 200 pieces. It turns out those icebergs that I saw that morning had all been part of the ice shelf the day before, and there had been this massive collapse and breakout where a huge chunk, like 15 miles wide, 15 miles deep of the glacier, literally just kind of like exploded or fractured overnight. It's such a violent, gigantic change. I was there and at some level I didn't notice it happening. I didn't hear anything. I just thought like, well that looks really pretty. And so, you know, this is a chunk of Thwaites bigger than the city where I live falling apart right in front of me. It's such a dramatic change and it's so perilous for our ship. Like ships wanna avoid ice break icebergs at all costs that we flee that part of the Amundsen Sea after that event. So it's like two days later. And then I see a much smaller scale calving event where the front of the glacier, really kind of like turns to cottage cheese and crumbles into the water. Some huge chunks of ice fall off. And they're so big that, you know, they cause like a 10 foot wave of water to like rise up out of the ocean in front of them that starts traveling towards us. I'm on the main ship, but we have a couple scientists out in the bay at that moment on a zodiac, you know, hunting for Waddell seals. They have to flee to the nearest patch of open water. Like it's, it's a very accelerated moment of change and it's really dramatic. And in comparison to the collapse that we had been witness to three days ago or two days prior, it's like a tiny blip. It's like a tiny dust mote of change compared to what was actually happening on the day that we had to flee the test site. And so I feel like sometimes climate change is like that. It's like sometimes it's such a large shift that it's really hard to hold onto or see it. But you can sometimes find something that somehow is changing on a human scale that we can see and it's evidence of these larger shifts. And somehow the little thing is more dramatic or more perceptible, which is both funny and terrifying to me.

Ariana Brocious: So how do you connect watching this glacier collapse before your eyes with all these memories and interviews you'd done with flood victims on the coast?

Elizabeth Rush: I feel like something that flood victims are really good at is living with tremendous uncertainty, like a lot of areas that flood once flood multiple times. And there's a little bit of a sense of you never know when the next flood is gonna come. How are you gonna prepare? What, like, you know what you can do after you live through one? You can lift up your furniture, you can put sandbags around your house. I felt like through their stories, I learned to live with a kind of persistent uncertainty, but watching the scale of the collapse of Thwaites happen, where I couldn't even see it, it felt like the level of uncertainty that I had grown accustomed to and felt kind of safe or familiar with was like the wrong scale of uncertainty that I had, like missed it by a factor of three or something like that. So in that sense it was incredibly humbling.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. So the book has a huge cast of characters, but you say the Thwaites Glacier is the biggest, most important character. How so?

Elizabeth Rush: I mean, I just wanna acknowledge that like we're all on this boat 'cause we have, each person in their own way has been drawn towards Thwaites and I was really interested in thinking about not just that human beings are having an impact on Antarctica, but that Antarctica impacts us. Right. And I wanted to kind of reverse the sense of agency there. Because Antarctica's almost always like a backdrop. It's almost always like a place to be conquered and I remember asking the chief scientist on board. I was like, do you think Antarctica shapes us? And I thought he was kind of going to dismiss this question as humanistic sorcery. And he thought about it for a second and he was like, well, yes, of course. The tremendous stability of Antarctica's glaciers throughout the later Holocene, like the last 6,000 years, really gives rise to human civilization as we know it. If you look outside of the last 6,000 years of planetary history, sea levels rise roughly like they rise three feet a century all the time. And right now, like three feet a century, we are having such a hard time dealing with that. We're having a hard time adapting our coastal cities at a rate, to a rate of change that's pretty common outside of the last 6,000 years. He said, you know, the fact that these glaciers held still for so long allowed us to build along the coast in the way that we have and have these international or deeply connected human societies, and I thought that was really interesting. So when I say Thwaites is like the most important actor in this play, I'm trying to tease out some of that acknowledgement that even though Antarctica is at the bottom of the planet, it shapes us just as much as we shape it.

Ariana Brocious: The narrative in your book about your journey to Thwaites Glacier, is interspersed with the crew's birth stories. What do you think is powerful about that story? The birth story of someone.

Elizabeth Rush: Everyone has come here through the generous gift of someone else's body, you know, to make a home inside someone else's body for nine months. You understand that no human being is ever alone or singular when you understand that that is where we all begin. And I think that's something that's really important in this book is to really in subtle ways talk about like deep interconnection, not just amongst human beings, but also kind of ecosystems and a kind of planetary web of life that when I say that, you know, includes ice and rock and ocean as actors. So I think talking about birth in this kind of universal way has that power. I also think birth stories in general are really interesting, fascinating, full of like rich, unexpected details. And I for one was, you know, at least 25 before I heard my first birth story. And I remember reading it, it was a dear friend who shared with me, you know, the seven pages she had written after giving birth to her son, and I was shocked. I was just like, oh my God, I had no idea that labor was anything like that. And so it also feels like, you know, a really interesting sort of taboo that this is something that everybody at some level has access to experiences knows about, and we don't ever talk about it.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, there is sort of a taboo. I mean, you mostly just hear, “Baby and mom are doing great.” We've talked with other people who have debated whether or not to have children in the climate crisis, and some of it, as you've already talked about, is tied to feelings of guilt and privilege and worrying about one person's impact. But some of it is about the world that the kid will grow up in and the already worsening situations on so many fronts, you know, more severe weather storms, environmental degradation, ecosystem collapse, those types of things. And as a mother myself, I feel like there's a point of almost having to do a kind of cognitive dissonance, of like knowing that's there and also choosing to make the decisions you do. And I'm wondering if that is how it is for you or how you, how you evaluate sort of the ongoing risks that might present themselves to your kid and, and how you think about it?

Elizabeth Rush: That's a great question and I feel like it's exactly sort of like, yes, you worry that your child will have an impact on the planet, but you also worry about the planet's impact on your child. And I very recently thought to myself, It's going to be worse in my son's lifetime than what I reckoned, you know, as I was choosing to, to bring him into the world. And I think that feels very familiar in almost any aspect of climate change. It's like, we think it's going to do X and then we find out that that thing is happening faster than we imagined a couple years ago or a couple decades ago. So, I think I wanna acknowledge that that is a scary feeling. And I'm not sure if it makes me think, oh, did I miscalculate like I did, I think I did miscalculate. And at the same time you have, I have committed, I have this child here. It makes me all the more aware that what we do In the next 15 years plays a really significant role in shaping the tone and timber of that future planet that they're gonna live in. And so it's made me feel and act with more urgency than I had even a couple years ago. But I think it is true that there is at some level a feeling of incredible cognitive dissonance that you know, I feel like I see all of these future threats and their present threats and at the same time, one of my tasks as a mother is to like teach this child to fall in love with the world. 'cause he can't fight for it if he doesn't love it first.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. So as we wrap up here, you witnessed what's known as the Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites Glacier, falling apart, as we've discussed literally in front of you even. So you have a hopeful disposition. So how do you think about the future now, having come back from this trip, having had a child? What's your outlook?

Elizabeth Rush: I feel like, in the US over the last, let's say let's say over the past couple centuries, it's like we lost the thread of the larger story that we live inside of that we are completely dependent upon freshwater and the unfurling of seeds into plants and all manner of animal energy and, that human beings in nature are not at all separate from one another. Humans are, you know, a de facto part of nature. We are animals and I feel like we've told a story for centuries that says that we're separate or different than the world that really supports and nurtures us. I think climate change is teaching us the fallacy of that kind of thinking, and I hope that it is re-enlivening our attention to the more than human world because in part of the violence with which it's unfolding in the present moment. I don't know how the story ends, but I do think that I see reason for hope despite the dire circumstances, and I think it has to do with kind of mending that relationship as best we can.

Ariana Brocious: Elizabeth Rush is author of the Quickening:Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your stories here on Climate One.

Elizabeth Rush: Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Greg Dalton: Much of the data we rely on to characterize the scale and scope of the climate crisis comes from one essential and comprehensive source: The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

Ariana Brocious: Scientists from all parts of the globe come together to review the latest data, publishing regular reports that summarize the findings about the climate emergency. Joëlle Gergis is a climate scientist at Australia National University and served as a lead author of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. In her book “Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope,” she wrestles with her own questions around finding the hope to restore our relationships with ourselves, each other and the environment.

Greg Dalton: When she was in high school in 1994, wildfires engulfed Sydney, not far from her home. Witnessing those fires helped set her on the path to becoming a climate scientist.

Joëlle Gergis: I guess as a 16 year old, it was a pretty terrifying experience to see, you know, ash falling from the sky and just littering the neighborhood, and it was one of those things that I realized that extreme weather is something that has really shaped a country like Australia. And as a young person, I was really wanting to understand, what actually causes these ferocious weather conditions? And I guess that led me on a journey, a long journey, which I'm still on, which is trying to understand how the climate is changing and what are the causes of the changes.

Greg Dalton: Right. And such effects of climate disruption are becoming increasingly apparent to more and more people around the world. We saw that this summer. Does that give you any hope that it'll create enough awareness and action to respond to what we're seeing and experiencing and the science?

Joëlle Gergis: Well, I think a lot of scientists often wonder whether this is going to be the year when people finally wake up and they finally get it. But I'm not hopeful that that is gonna be the case, although I do think that 2023, as we can already see, is bringing a lot of extreme weather and climate conditions to effectively every corner of the globe. And so I think it is gonna be a very interesting year in terms of how things play out with the El Nino that's intensifying in the Pacific Ocean at present. And given that we have now warmed the climate, 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial conditions, an ll of natural variability is playing out on the background of this warmer world. And so we can expect unprecedented conditions as the southern hemisphere, summer starts to, to warm up. And, and so we've been looking to the Northern Hemisphere, and to be honest, I dread actually what's gonna be playing out, in our part of the world, given just the extremes that we've experienced in recent years have been, I mean, for me has really been a main motivator for setting aside some of my own research objectives in the science that I work on to actually try and communicate with the public.

Greg Dalton: And one of the big reports that goes to the public is the UN InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change sixth assessment report that's for policymakers and gets lots of mainstream news coverage. How did that role affect your emotional attachment to your work and what you're navigating and experiencing?

Joëlle Gergis: I think it's fair to say that working on the IPCC was a life-changing experience for someone like me. I mean, if you can imagine sitting around a table with people from all parts of the world. So in my chapter team, I was working on the water cycle chapter and we had people from Pakistan and China and France and New Zealand, and you name it. But I guess for me, being someone that was trying to help with the global Climate Change assessment report. It's effectively like having a giant jigsaw puzzle and you're trying to piece all these different pieces together to get a sense of what's happening globally. And I think many of us as research scientists, we understand the conditions that our own region is experiencing, but when you actually stop to piece it all together to get a global perspective, that's when I think for me, something really clicked and I realized that things are actually a lot worse than the average person realizes. And I really wanted to do my best to, to clearly communicate it out to people so they really understand what's at stake, because we are actually in what a lot of the scientists refer to as this critical decade. So the 2020s are gonna be this period that we look back on and say, well, where did you, where were you and how did you show up in this moment?

Greg Dalton: Right. Though old timers like me can recall that we've been saying and hearing critical decade for several decades. That even goes back into the, to the eighties. The IPCC assessment reports come out every six years and they're a synthesis of science. They don't create new science, they’re kind of the state of known science. And yet I wonder, you know, in the United States we have a real, certainly Covid showed, skepticism of science. Some people are just rejecting science. So how important it is, is it to have more of these reports when it's happening all around us do we really need science? Is science leading the conversation?

Joëlle Gergis: Look, I think personally I feel like we would be flying blind without science navigating us through these very complex times. And I think it's, it's sort of like saying, well, if you had a medical condition, you know, it doesn't, doesn't really matter if you go and see a specialist about a particular aggressive cancer or whatever other complex condition you might have, I think that that is an insidious trend that is starting to, to really contaminate public debate. And as a scientist, I find it very alarming because it is one of these things where, when you are actually a part of the process that develops information and evidence in terms of our scientific research, you can see how difficult it is. It's a very rigorous process and it goes through various rounds of peer review, and it's not just someone with an opinion. We aren't just people with an opinion here. This is something that is based on effectively the entire body of work from thousands and thousands of scientists. So I think people don't really appreciate just how much goes into every single line of an IPCC report. It is a grueling process and it is poured over by literally hundreds of people. So I think that's what makes it a particularly powerful report.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. Coming up, finding our own power to create change:

Joëlle Gergis: Our politicians are responding to us as voters, and companies are responding to us as consumers. So we actually have enormous power, political power, and consumer power to provide or remove the social license for the continued exploitation of our planet. (:14)

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. In 2019, Joëlle Gergis was returning from an intense five-day meeting with other IPCC scientists. Feeling overwhelmed, she wrote the following in her journal.

Joëlle Gergis: It's extraordinary to realize that we are witnessing the great unraveling, the beginning of the end of things. I honestly never thought I'd live to see the start of what sometimes feels like the apocalypse. The earth is struggling to maintain its equilibrium. It's possible that we are now seeing a cascade of tipping points lurching into action as the momentum of instability takes hold and things start to come apart. I honestly don’t know what the future will bring.

Greg Dalton: Wow, that gives me chills to hear that. What's it like for you to reread those words today?

Joëlle Gergis: Well, to be honest, it takes me back to basically sitting on a long haul flight and I'd just boarded and was, I was so overwhelmed with, with what had just occurred in the IPCC meeting and, and basically I just took my journal out and just started writing everything that was in my mind and I was crying and I was feeling really, really overwhelmed. So it was a difficult decision to choose to share such personal information. But I realized that the missing link in some of this is that people aren't making an emotional connection with what is actually unfolding right now. And sometimes when we talk about climate change, people think, oh, well, it's just about numbers on a graph. Well, that's actually not right. It's about the people and the places we love and the threats to those conditions that have had humanity in a really sort of stable place for, for a very, very long time. So for me, I've been trying to, I guess the way I phrase it in the book is connect the head with the heart. So it isn't just enough to understand the facts and figures of climate science because to be honest, I mean, I'm not even sure that that's important anymore because I, sometimes, I think again about a medical analogy. If you were diagnosed with a cardiac condition. Do you need to go and study cardiology and, and really be across every single thing to do with the medical science? I actually don't think so. We have to trust our experts who've devoted their life's work to this. And I think a similar thing applies with climate science. We do need to know the basics, and we do need to understand particularly what's at stake. But I think it's important to say we don't all have to be scientists. In fact, we don't need more scientists right now. We actually need the rest of the community engaging in this. Whether it's people from the social sciences, the general public, you name it, we need it right now. And I don't think people can make an emotional connection with renewable energy targets, to be honest. But they can make a connection with say, a beautiful, a local beach that they visit or a forest that they love, or a particularly important hiking trail or whatever it is for that particular region or that particular person, or just for a lot of people who have children, is realizing that the little people in their life will not experience the world as they did and that we are in fact this last generation of people to see the world as it is today. And I think most people still haven't quite come to terms with what that actually means because it's actually a pretty profound thing to consider.

Greg Dalton: Right. We're attached to the world as we've known it, as it has been, and it's kind of discontinuity with what's been and what is and what will be, and that's hard for our perception perhaps lags there. You write that “as scientists we're often quick to reach for more facts than grapple with the complexity of our emotions.” And you quote Rachel Carson, ecologist and author of Silent Spring first published in 1962 who wrote, “it's not half so important to know as to feel.” Scientists are expected to be rational and not bring their feelings into their work. So how do you navigate that?

Joëlle Gergis: I think that's something that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about in recent years, particularly since my engagement with IPCC work. But the reality is that we compartmentalize our emotions away from our scientific work. But there comes a point where, for instance, here in Australia, as I've mentioned, we've been experiencing a swag of really extreme weather and climate conditions. And so for example, 98% of the Great Barrier Reef has now been bleached in some form since 1998. And actually in a mass bleaching event that happened during the last El Nino, 50% of the Great Barrier Reef died off in a single mass bleaching and that doesn't actually–

Greg Dalton: Wow. Wow. I just wanna say, just pause there and say, wow. Wow.

Joëlle Gergis: Well, it's profound, and this is the reason why I think people like me need to start speaking up more than we are because I mean, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism on the planet. And if we've actually seen 50% of it die off in just a handful of years, and that actually doesn't even take into account two subsequent mass bleachings that happened in 2020 and 2022. Those numbers haven't quite been released yet. And that's a complex political process that I won't go into right now, but, just to give you idea of the scale of the destruction and the fact that, I mean it pains me to say, but we're actually seeing this large scale ecosystem collapse right now, and it is one of these things that I don't think most people can allow themselves to absorb for very long because it is so profoundly depressing and also really overwhelming. But I really feel that it is possible to be rational and objective and professional, but still be a human being and say, okay, well this is the state of the climate crisis that we're facing right now. And I do feel feelings of grief and anger and frustration around that. I just think that makes me human. It doesn't make me a robot. And, I think that for a lot of people it's very hard to engage with science because it is technically challenging, but also because it doesn't always open up space for people to feel like they know how they can contribute to the conversation, the solutions. And as I argue in my book, it's about the cultural and the social change that we need because we have all the scientific information we need to know, in terms of the solutions. I mean, the IPCC actually has this incredible statistic that a lot of people don't often think about, which is that we have options available to us in terms of solutions across all sectors that could at least halve global emissions by 2030. That's right now, that's not 2050, that's not the end of the century. These are things that we could deploy today. So whether that's solar and wind energy or energy efficiency in terms of buildings and other things, and also habitat conservation and the restoration of ecosystems. So there are things we can do right now. And so to me, the actual grief comes about from that, this disconnect between what we know the scientific reality to be and this real gap between the policy response. And remember that our politicians are responding to us as voters, and companies are responding to us as consumers. So we actually have enormous power, political power, and consumer power to provide or remove the social license for the continued exploitation of our planet. And I think it's actually a really, like I say, it, it's, it's a profound moment, which is why the book is actually called Humanities Moment because it's about reconnecting with our inherent, intrinsic and shared humanity, which wants to see life continue on this planet, which believes a sustainability is possible, and it is something that is entirely within our capability as human beings, but it's whether or not we choose to step up to this moment. I think this is really that this is the dilemma. This is the ethical and moral dilemma we face right now. Every single one of us is alive right now on the planet.

Greg Dalton: Right, and there's so much public and cultural and political opposition to the solutions being deployed at scale now, whether it's offshore wind, don't wanna see it in my view, or don't want solar and some beautiful landscape, or don't want more dense housing in my neighborhood. You know, we're our own obstacles in many ways to the solutions that we know can do this and yet we don't want them kind of in our area here or there. You write that current policies in place today will lead to about two to three and a half degrees celsius of warming from pre-industrial era by the end of the century with the best estimate around two and a half degrees Celsius of post-industrial warming if countries implement their long-term net zero emission targets, which is a big if, two degrees Celsius is considered most likely for post-industrial temperature increase. A decade ago, those scenarios would've been much darker, much higher boiling. Should we be talking more about the progress we've made? You know, are we a bunch of whiners?

Joëlle Gergis: That's a good question. Firstly, I do think it's important to talk about some of the progress we made, but it needs to be genuine progress. So here in Australia where we have, we're a nation that has a very long history of the exploitation of fossil fuels. We're one of the largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas. And so we are very wedded to our export revenue that comes about from the exploitation of these industries. So we had a change in our federal government in 2022, and we have a more progressive administration now that have actually legislated a climate policy. So our target is now 43% reductions, by 2030 with net zero thereafter. So it's certainly a step forward, but in the same breath, we are also continuing to approve the expansion of really large oil fields and gas fields in the northern part of our country. So that effectively will offset any of the perceived progress that we've made in these areas. So we still, a nation like Australia are not really prepared to step away from fossil fuels despite the rhetoric that's there. We've actually had several coal and gas projects approved even under this new administration. So there's still a bit of hypocrisy going on in this space. And there's also some. I guess disturbing carbon credit accounting schemes that are being put forward as well in terms of trying to offset the emissions from these polluting fossil fuels and so we're not quite out of the woods is what I would say.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, we're far from that. And also I should say that, the International Energy Agency has said we don't need new fossil fuel extraction. We've got enough fossil fuels already. So those new projects approved are in contradiction to the world's foremost energy authority who says, we don't need new deposits and discovery. Right?

Joëlle Gergis: Oh, absolutely. And not only that, I mean, the IPCC also says that we, we basically have to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground if we are trying to not blow our carbon budgets. So it's, it's one of these things that I think we're heading in the right direction, but it's not nearly fast enough. And I think that this is what is a cause of great concern to the scientific community. And as we've already seen in 2023, we are starting to see some, some pretty alarming trends play out. It's consistent with the science, so it's to be expected, but I guess it's also thinking, well, if we can experience such disruptive conditions like wildfires or floods or heat waves and so on, with just 1.2 degrees of global warming, then what are we going to get with two, with three or even four degrees of global warming? And I think that's also something that's really important to think about because this is really just a prelude for what's to come, and I don't think many of us really wanna find out what the implications are, although that's exactly what the IPCC report actually provides is a very detailed documentation for every single region of the world as to what we can expect with different levels of global warming. So it's really up to us how bad we let things get. We find ourselves at this very tricky crossroads in human history, and we need to decide whether this is the moment where we finally step up and we live sustainably on the planet. We try and restore some of the destruction that has effectively, I mean, if you think about this, the situation we're in right now is a result of every single decision that's ever been made to exploit the natural world. That's really at the heart of it, and we've got to this point now where we've actually destabilized planetary conditions. That is a phenomenal thing to actually stop and wrap your mind around.

Greg Dalton: Right. And for a book subtitled, a Climate Scientist case for hope, I've felt myself feeling despair reading it. You know, much of it presents a lot of truly awful, terrifying news, which you've been discussing and experiencing. How do you balance that reality with saying, we gotta have hope or the, is the hope contrived? I didn't get a lot of hope, I guess from–

Joëlle Gergis: No, no. The hope's certainly not contrived. As I say in the book, I'm someone that has to manage depression in my life. And so maybe I've picked the wrong career path as a climate scientist. But no. In the course of writing that book, I also had a chance to really read through a whole bunch of books that were really inspiring for me. And I came across, you know, writers like Rebecca Solnit, and she had this beautiful book called, Hope in the Dark. And effectively her work really got me in touch with the fact that human history is full of these really important struggles for social justice. So whether it be for gender equality or civil rights or whatever it might be, that is the story of human history. Whenever we are progressing as a society, there's always gonna be this sort of tension between moving forward at moving away from the status quo and moving into a more progressive frame of mind. And so that's actually the story of human history, right? So right now we are facing. As I mentioned, the destabilization of the planetary conditions that have allowed humans to thrive on earth, and we need to unleash the greater social movement that we've ever seen. And, and if you stop and you look, and I actually detail this in my book, there's evidence of this all over the world. I mean, a really classic example is the student strikers that Greta Thunberg really mobilized in terms of the younger generation, but it's happening all over the world. And, and we do need to tell better stories about that, but it's not happening fast enough. And so, for me, that's really, as a scientist, that's where science ends and that's where the social movement begins. And I think it's really about thinking about how people can engage in this topic, which is really, as I said it isn't just about intellectually understanding the facts and figures, it's also about understanding are we gonna take a stand and really fight for the things that we love? And until we make that emotional connection, then things won't change because we, we really do fight for the things we care about. Right?

Greg Dalton: Sure, and we care about our children, though we've did a recent episode on youth activists some years after their young activism, and some of them said to us they feel that there's a burden shifting, that there's sort of a generational dodge when boomers say, oh, look at the kids. You know, they're so hope and inspiring that they. They interpret that as you and me evading our generational responsibility. So aside from the youth, what do you see as most promising, you know, in terms of the action that's generating the movement that's happening to address the climate crisis?

Joëlle Gergis: Look, I do think that there has been a political shift at least, like I said here in Australia, we have seen a shift towards more progressive policies, but we still have a lot of work to do. And the same thing would apply in the US with the Biden administration, right? So there's a, there's a lot of good will there in terms of, I think, moving things along. But in terms of actually implementing these policies and starting to see these real reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, starting to really take effect really comes about from the shift in the political response to this. So it is about individuals and communities and nations really, really stepping up and getting behind the leaders that are brave enough to try and stare down the fossil fuel lobby right now. And that's really what it comes down to, because actually it's pretty insidious. I mean, the next UN climate Summit that's gonna be held in the United Arab Emirates right at the end of November this year. I mean it's gonna be held in one of the world's largest oil and gas regions of the world. And it's chaired by a CEO of the national oil company. So there's a lot of room there to feel really pessimistic, but again, it's about shining a light on this and people actually starting to get angry. I've been talking to people and lately they've been saying, I don't feel depressed about this anymore. I just feel angry. And maybe that is something we need to channel. I mean, it's not always suitable in all circumstances, right? But it's certainly when people say, enough is enough. And a line gets crossed, then, that's really when people start to behave differently.

Greg Dalton: Joëlle Gergis is Climate Scientist at Australian National University, an author of Humanity's Moment: a Climate Scientist Case for Hope. Joëlle, thank you so much for sharing your insights on Climate One today.

Joëlle Gergis: My pleasure. Thank you for, for having me.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about the challenges of navigating feelings and science on a disrupted planet.

Ariana Brocious: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Greg Dalton is our Executive Producer and Co-Host. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager and co-produced this episode. Wency Shaida is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Ariana Brocious.

5:00 Elizabeth Rush on being a woman on a ship exploring Antarctica
11:00 Navigating the decision whether or not to have a child
18:30 Calving at Thwaites Glacier
24:00 Antarctica's role in climate stability
33:00 Joëlle Gergis on why she became a climate scientist
35:00 Working on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
43:00 Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
50:00 The possible consequences of ignoring the IPCC’s recommendations
56:00 COP28 being held in United Arab Emirates

Play

Lights, Camera, Inaction: Where is Climate’s Starring Role?

Megan Biscieglia — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 19:49:47 +0000

Lights, Camera, Inaction: Where is Climate’s Starring Role?

04/28/2023

Climate disruption is a bigger and bigger part of our lives, and yet there’s one place it still doesn’t show up much: our television and movie screens. With the exception of the 2004 action film The Day After Tomorrow and recent comedy Don’t Look Up, in which a meteor was a metaphor for climate, it’s hard to come up with many examples.

Extrapolations, a new series on AppleTV+, explores the future consequences of burning fossil fuels. The series was written, produced and directed by Scott Z. Burns, who also worked on Contagion and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

“We need to recognize that the climate behind all of our stories is changing. That's not up to me. That's not a dramatic choice, that's reality,” Burns says.

Executives fear climate change won’t sell – that it’s too overwhelming or depressing.

“We have been taught to believe that this problem is way too big to change. We've also been taught that all of the solves likely are the denial of our appetites. And so, you're looking at a problem that says you can't have any fun, and pretty much no matter what you do as an individual nothing's gonna change anything. So, those are the pre-existing narratives that I think you walk into a room with as a screenwriter and the person across the desk from you has a tendency to say, yeah, this is depressing and it turns people off because it just makes them feel bad about themselves,” Burns says.

Burns says rather than creating an end-of-the-world show, he and his collaborator Dorothy Fortenberry focused on the “the second act of climate change,” exploring how we live through it. “Because long before anyone, you know, before we'll all die from it, we’ll have an opportunity to live with it. And it is how we live with it and how we live with each other that's going to help us discover a lot of solutions, and a lot of fascinating stories about ourselves, our families, our faiths, our comforts, all of our appetites.”

Anna Jane Joyner, founder and director of Good Energy, a nonprofit story consultancy for the age of climate change, says part of the reason why there isn’t more climate storytelling is because there isn’t a lot of precedent. She’s working to change that.

“We're just asking people to write about what it feels like to be human right now and to be honest about depicting in your story worlds the world that we live in,” she says.

Good Energy released a report in collaboration with the USC Norman Lear Media Center that analyzed the frequency of climate keywords in more than 37,000 TV and movie scripts from 2016 to 2020. And they found that climate hardly ever shows up. In a related audience survey, they found that only 25% of respondents come across the climate crisis in scripted entertainment, and most depictions are negative.

Joyner says she’s seen a sea change in the industry around climate change content since she started piloting Good Energy in 2019. “There's so much appetite and literacy, like people actually know what we're talking about now…So I think we're headed in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work to do to support this industry.”

Guests

Scott Z. Burns

Writer, Director, Producer

Anna Jane Joyner

Founder and CEO, Good Energy

A Glaring Absence: The Climate Crisis is Virtually Nonexistent in Scripted Entertainment (goodenergystories.com)

Note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the actual audio before quoting it.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton.

Ariana Brocious: And I’m Ariana Brocious.

Greg Dalton: Climate disruption is a bigger and bigger part of our lives, and yet there’s one place it still doesn’t show up much: scripted entertainment on TV and film.

Ariana Brocious: Hollywood has been slow to include climate in its stories, whether as a central focus or background element. Maybe because it’s too overwhelming, or depressing, or it makes us feel guilty.

Scott Z. Burns: We have been taught to believe that this problem is way too big to change. We've also been taught that all of the solves likely are the denial of our appetites.

Greg Dalton: That’s Scott Z. Burns, the writer and director behind Extrapolations, a series on AppleTV+ that revolves entirely around the climate crisis. But his show is a rarity.

Ariana Brocious: And while, in truth, I find Extrapolations hard to watch because it feels SO accurate and scary, this matters because like so many other aspects of our culture, what we see on TV and in movies has tremendous power to shape how we think about an issue. Think about how much Will and Grace helped increase acceptance of LGBTQ people.

Greg Dalton: Will and Jack’s kiss was a breakthrough moment for a lot of people. In climate, Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, awakened and activated a generation of people, including me.

Ariana Brocious: And since then many excellent documentaries have portrayed how burning fossil fuels disrupts food production and is driving more severe fires, floods and droughts. But there aren't many narrative features that give climate and energy more than a passing reference.

Greg Dalton: So true. My daughter’s high school class is studying climate and they watched The Day After Tomorrow, which was released in 2004. It’s telling that the teacher - whose son is an IPCC author - is showing a film made before the students were born. There haven’t been many climate-centered feature films since.

Ariana Brocious: Anna Jane Joyner is working to change that.

Anna Jane Joyner: We're just asking people to write about what it feels like to be human right now and to be honest about depicting in your story worlds the world that we live in.

Ariana Brocious: She’s founder and director of Good Energy, a nonprofit story consultancy for the age of climate change. Her group released a report in collaboration with the USC Norman Lear Center that analyzed the frequency of climate keywords in more than 37,000 TV and movie scripts from 2016 to 2020. And they found that climate hardly ever shows up.

Greg Dalton: In a related audience survey, they found that only a quarter of respondents come across the climate crisis in scripted entertainment, and most depictions are negative.

Ariana Brocious: So I asked Anna Jane Joyner why climate isn’t a more prominent theme in TV and film.

Anna Jane Joyner: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons. I would say the biggest one is that there's not a lot of precedent, and when you're a writer, you're always looking, for inspiration to, to what came before you as far as, you know, the content that you're, you're focusing on. But there's also other reasons. We do a lot of qualitative research, so we've talked to hundreds of television film writers at this point to identify what those hurdles are and what they need for support. Prior to 2019 when we started piloting Good Energy, there really wasn't any dedicated programming in the television film industry to support television, film writers in portraying climate change on screen. And, you know, that's a pretty big oversight on behalf of the climate movement because, you know, the Department of Defense has had people in Hollywood supporting writers for almost a century. The CIA has had people in Hollywood, the fossil fuel industry has had people in Hollywood – they financed a film in 1948, and they've been here ever since. And a lot of other social impact, organizations like Color of Change does amazing work on racial justice and storytelling in the industry. Define American does incredible work on immigration storylines. Illuminative does really incredible work on Indigenous storylines and representation, and there was nothing like that for climate. And so there wasn't a support system. There's not a lot of creative references for how to bring climate into your story. And I think the other big piece is, you know, prior to the last five years, people just weren't paying attention. Like, you know, it's the same as the rest of the country. It's only been within the past five years where people started to really grapple with climate change and worry about it and experience it.

Ariana Brocious: I'm curious to know if among those factors, just the science literacy behind climate, if that's an obstacle for some writers or studio executives who sort of aren't sure if they understand it enough to maybe to write about it or to produce a movie about it.

Anna Jane Joyner: Yeah, I mean certainly I think the way that climate has traditionally been talked about in journalism has been very scientific and, and kind of policy or technically oriented. And we definitely found with the writers that the research factor was intimidating. Like even if they really cared about climate, you know, and I did kind of a couple of Google searches, putting myself in the position of writers and what it would feel like to do this research if I didn't have a huge background in climate change.

And even going to the NASA website, you know, the climate information there is pretty dense and, and technical and scientific and hard to access if you're a lay person. And that's true with a lot of the communication from mainstream climate organizations. It's changing, but it's, you know, still kind of prevalent. Writers need research support, especially TV writers, because they're pumping out episodes really, really quickly and they don't have time to spend hours and hours and hours researching the minute scientific details or policy details. So that's something we really try to, you know, we have a range of services to support writers, but certainly kind of doing the research for them and really giving it to them on a silver platter is a big part of that. And, I would say along with that, like we were very intentional when we wrote our playbook for screenwriting in the age of climate change. One to work with screenwriters. So my two of my co-authors are screenwriters, but also to make sure that we were translating all of the information into a language that creatives found accessible and inspiring. And then also, including the facts, but also including character inspirations and creative prompts, and really helping to imagine how this can show up in story in a way that is entertaining and artful.

Ariana Brocious: When climate is incorporated in scripted entertainment, it can be done in a few different ways. Sometimes it's just background behavior, like a character driving an EV or maybe adopting a vegetarian diet. It can be a subplot or it can be like the central focus as we've seen in The Day After Tomorrow or recently, Apple TV's Extrapolations. What have you seen recently with how writers and directors are navigating these various ways of bringing climate into their shows?

Anna Jane Joyner: Yeah, I mean, Extrapolations is, you know, a historic moment for the industry and the climate movement. It's the first scripted television show where climate is a central character in the story and a big part of the driver of the plot and the character's lives. So that's super exciting. And then of course, Don't Look Up. They did actually mention climate change, a couple of passing, but this story is really a metaphor, but that was really wonderful for us because it showed how you could write about climate in a comedic way, but also that it can make an enormous amount of money. You know, like that was one of the best performing films in Netflix history. And so,we absolutely need more of those stories where like, climate is the central focus, but also We just need more stories where it's acknowledged. You know, like the way that we talk about it is we're, we're just asking people to write about what it feels like to be human right now and to be honest about depicting in your story world's the world that we live in. And so any story across any genre, if it's taking place in modern times or in the future, on this earth, so not talking about fantasy or historicals, but any modern story, climate change is a part of that story and what we help writers do is to uncover how that authentically shows up for their, for their characters. And the same way that if they were real people out in the world, they would be authentically encountering climate change. So, yeah, we, we really, we talk about it as a spectrum. So we have climate placement, which is really that background, you know, taking single used plastic off screen, showing EVs, having characters lean into a vegetarian diet, but something that isn't necessarily talked about. And then we have it, you know, coming up in dialogue where it's just kind of in passing, but it's very clear that the characters are thinking about it and, and signaling to the audience that them thinking about it is valid and okay. And so that's really important just for normalizing discussions of climate change and real life. And also making audiences feel less alone, you know, in their own experience and, and concerns. And then we have kind of, when it shows up in the world story, and it's certainly a player that impacts the plot in the character development, but it's not the focal point of the story. So a good example of that would be Glass Onion. And then we have the Extrapolations of the world, uh, where it really is the primary focus of the, of the story, and we need, we need climate acknowledged across all of those.

Ariana Brocious: The movie, How to Blow Up a Pipeline recently opened in theaters. It features a group of eight characters, all with different motivations who come together to strike a blow at the oil industry. It plays like a heist movie where the heroes are what some might call terrorists, or eco terrorists. Let's listen to a bit of the trailer.

So without giving too much away, what did you think of the portrayals of these activists in How to Blow up a Pipeline?

Anna Jane Joyner: I mean, just from an objective point of view, like not talking about the climate themes, it is an amazing film. Like it is just such an example about how you can tell a truly entertaining and artful story through the meeting medium of film that is gripping, you know, and, and that includes climate as a central part of the focus. I also just was blown away by the character development. You know, it's a big ensemble cast, which I really love because we do need to be showing more collective action and not just individual heroes. But you really get attached to these characters. You know, you, you empathize with their stories. And even though, you know, some people might consider them terrorists, you hear where they're coming from. In many ways, if you care about climate change, you can identify with their reasoning. And that is just such a feat of storytelling and the fact that the main writer and the star is 24 years old just blows me away, no pun intended. And also, I think is just a prophetic example of the way that climate stories will be told as Gen Z becomes more and more prevalent, filmmakers, because it really channels the rage that a lot of young people feel right now. And I also loved the characters cuz they were deeply flawed and I think, um, it's really unhelpful to only have people who care about climate change or are working on climate change who are superheroes. Like we, we need to be able to identify with the characters and every single person I know in the climate space is flawed. You know, every human is flawed.

Ariana Brocious: And it has received, the movie has received some criticism from the right. But I'm curious what you think of the villain of the story being the oil industry, though no oil industry executives are shown in the film.

Anna Jane Joyner: I am all for it. You know, in our research with USC Media Impact Project, it showed that, uh, climate change or anything related to it, showed up 2.8% of the time in scripted television and film, which is obviously so, so low. And also just like not an honest reflection of the world that we're living in anymore. In the rare occasions that it does show up, oftentimes, you know, it's, it's in the form of shaming or guilting people about their personal behavioral choices. So shaming someone over their S U V or their plastic straw, or not recycling, and that just like shuts you down, you know, like shame and guilt is an intentional strategy of the fossil fuel industry to move the onus of a responsibility from the fossil fuel industry to the individual and that even the carbon footprint print was popularized by bp. And, and so I think stories that really show the responsible parties, which is the fossil fuel industry, it is not our fault that we were born into an economic system that is shackled to fossil fuels. That was done to us. And, and so I'm all for more stories that just overtly call that out.

Ariana Brocious: So when climate is featured as the main theme of a story, oftentimes the storytelling is dark. Extrapolations fits into this space, and the overtone of the show is that we are losing everything. Some people say that show misses an opportunity to show characters advancing solutions and demonstrating how much agency individuals can have. So I'm curious what you think about that critique.

Anna Jane Joyner: I would push back on that critique as I'm sure Scott Z. Burns would and, and Dorothy Fortenberry. Because it really, it isn't showing the worst case scenario. that show shows the world that we are headed towards. Right now if we do not make major changes, The first three episodes are, you know, are set in 2037, the first one, and then the next two are in 2046 and 2047. Those climate impacts are pretty baked in. You know, like that really is the world that we will, in all likelihood be experiencing, even if we ended all fossil fuels tomorrow. After that it kind of divides and that's where it really heads more in the 2.5 degree to three degree Celsius trajectory versus what we all hope it being closer to 1.5 degrees. So I, I don't think everyone realizes that. You know, like it is dark. The world that we're headed towards is scary. There's no way of getting around that we're already living it. And inevitably it will get worse, um, before it gets better. Fingers crossed. And what they were, what they were trying to showcase was how do we be human in this world? You know, like, how do we. How do humans continue loving and, and you know, fighting and living and. And I think that that's really important. They describe it as really exploring what it means to be human in the messy middle. But you know, I think, I think the reason that people may be pushed back on some of the climate stories right now that are darker is because we just don't have a big enough menu of stories. I don't think that it's inherently bad to tell those kinds of stories.

Ariana Brocious: It confronts people with stuff we would rather not face too. I mean, frankly, it's hard to watch some of the Extrapolations show because it is, it does feel accurate and in scarily, so like, I don't wanna imagine that future, you know?

Anna Jane Joyner: Yeah, no, I, I think it's, you know, it's, it's hard, but we live in hard times. There's still beautiful times. There's still lots of hope, there's still lots of action and agency that we have control over, but it's not, You know, climate change is not an easy subject matter.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah. One aspect of the good energy report was the care that was taken to have voices from diverse backgrounds in the responses to survey questions. And this is important because diverse points of view, offer more well-rounded analysis. But what about the people bringing these climate stories to screen, and how do you think increasing the diversity of people telling climate stories would affect the kinds of stories that we see? The stories that are told?

Anna Jane Joyner: I mean, it's absolutely critical. I think that doesn't just apply to climate related stories. It applies to every kind of story, like most industries Hollywood is disproportionately white and male. And we need more fem-identifying storytellers. We certainly need more BIPOC storytellers. We need more LGBTQ storytellers. So all of those perspectives not only are just the right thing to do, like ethically speaking, but also they make the stories themselves better, you know, which actually the Blacklist has shown. They've done a lot of research on BIPOC scripts and television and film, uh, stories and, and they make a lot of money. And that's because bringing diverse voices and stories to the table, you just end up with a broader array of creativity. And certainly I think that's true for climate storytelling because it's, you can't really wrestle with climate, honestly, without talking about the fact that yes, it's a universal experience that affects everyone from the, the wealthiest to the poorest across, you know, you know, races and genders, but it's definitely affects some people much worse and, and first, and those people should be at the forefront of telling these stories.

Ariana Brocious: You mentioned that Good Energy has put together a playbook that helps writers include climate in their stories, and the playbook says, “including climate in your work doesn't mean being didactic, boring, or forced. It doesn't have to mean conjuring shame or doom.” Can you tell us a bit more about what's in the playbook and why it was important to create it?

Anna Jane Joyner: Yeah, I mean, it was important to create it because there was no climate resources aimed at screenwriters or, and very few aimed at storytellers in general. And so, we really wanted to take all of this climate information. And inspiration and translate it for this audience in a way that felt inviting and inspiring and exciting and, and creative. And so, I very intentionally built my team of both screenwriters and climate experts because we, we need both of those expertise to do this right. And so what we have kind of like the, the information you would expect. Climate 101, Dr. Kate Marvel, co wrote with that, with us. Dr. Peter Kalmus helped break out down the latest IPCC report. Uh, we have a section on solutions. We definitely have a section on, on intersections and intersectional justice. But we also have a great deal of inspiration. So showing a wide diversity of, of real life climate characters, you know, people like Reverend Yearwood and, um, you know, Fabiano Rodriguez and, and just really compelling diverse climate voices who have fascinating stories, you know, and we, and we intentionally chose to depict, climate leaders who were comfortable being vulnerable and honest about their own flaws. And because that is what makes for a great character. And then we also did a lot of fictional, um, character inspirations because, you know, we didn't wanna ask youth climate activists to tell us their dark secrets.

Ariana Brocious: Since you've started good energy, how have you seen climate storytelling change?

Anna Jane Joyner: It has been a sea change in the industry itself. And there's so much appetite and, and literacy, like people actually know what we're talking about now. Um, there's one network and one streamer who has in-house positions focused on climate content. That was absolutely unthinkable even just four years ago. So seeing this movement grow to support creators in the industry has. It's been like, almost like disorienting in, its, in its success. It's still like dramatically underfunded. Like we are overwhelmed with demand and opportunity. and we're not able to answer it at the rate that I would really like to. Also because like, because storytelling is very referential, the stories that come back come out in the next. Three to five years will have an outsize impact on all the stories that come after that. So yeah, the, the industry appetite and demand has. Is overwhelming in a, in a really good way. Um, and just a total change from when we first started piloting good energy in 2019. So I think we're headed in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work to do to support this industry.

Ariana Brocious: Anna Jane Joiner is a climate story consultant and the founder and director of Good Energy. Anna Jane, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.

Anna Jane Joyner: Yes. Thank you for having me.

Greg Dalton: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about climate storytelling in TV and film. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Coming up, making the worlds of TV and film reflect the reality of our changing world:

Scott Z. Burns: The shows that start coming down the pike at us in 5, 10 years that don't take into account climate change… those are science fiction shows, okay? Not ours.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. Apple TV+ recently released the series Extrapolations, exploring the future consequences of the climate crisis. It features a star-studded cast including Merryl Streep, Daveed Diggs, Edward Norton, Jr., Kerri Russell and others. It conveys a dystopian future that science says is possible though not inevitable. We still have time to create a future we want. And a quick heads up to listeners: If you haven't seen the show, there are some spoilers ahead.

Scott Z. Burns wrote, produced and directed Extrapolations. He also worked on the films Contagion and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. He was working in advertising in 1989, when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil – creating an enormous environmental disaster. Scott Burns went to work as an oil spill volunteer and later quit his job. I asked how that experience set him on the path to directing Extrapolations.

Scott Z. Burns: When I went, I thought I was going for just a week or two to volunteer. When I got up there, I realized there was a whole lot going on, not just with the oil spill but with the larger issue of how society deals with Indigenous populations and oil producers and PR and so many things. And I got back and it felt like there were more important things for me to be doing than writing beer commercials. Not that there's anything wrong with writing a beer commercial. I just was more passionate about other things. And it wasn't too long after that when I met Dennis Hayes, who had worked with Senator Gaylord Nelson on the first Earth Day. And Dennis said, you know, you don't have to go work at a phone bank. You could use the skills you already have and think about how to apply them to making change. And so, at that point in my life I had worked in advertising for a while. But as time went on, I really wanted the focus of my work to be entertainment. And whenever I could, I wanted to tell stories that I felt were impactful. You know, the stories that I had seen growing up that made me want to affect change, whether it was Serpico and learning about corruption in New York City, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and learning about, you know, mental illness. I loved those movies and I loved how I felt sitting there. And I wanted to do that with my life.

Greg Dalton: Thanks for sharing that story. I also went to Alaska and it changed my life in a way I didn't expect when I went up there. Time horizons are a central theme in climate conversations. When you were, just a little bit after that, producer on Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth, a lot of the talk was about 2100, end of the century. Then it moved to this decisive decade, and we had a couple of decisive decades now. Knowing that, why did you set Extrapolations decades into the future?

Scott Z. Burns: Well, you're exactly right. One of the things about An Inconvenient Truth that became apparent to me and Davis Guggenheim in the years afterwards was that in 2004 it was so easy to talk about what we needed to accomplish this century, even though there were people like James Hansen saying we had 10 years. And so, you know, when I started writing Extrapolations a few years ago I wanted to put it sort of as far in the future as An Inconvenient Truth was in my personal past. But more importantly, I became very interested in this idea of everybody has a different event horizon for climate change, or for any issue in their life. And I wanted to be cognizant of that. I didn't want to go into a version of the future where there were flying cars and other very extreme things because I think it’s easy for the audience to push that away and go, well, that's a different world, that's not my planet. I wanted to make something that was undeniably coming at us. And so, we chose in our pilot, you know, fires and ice sheets melting and things that are already in the news. Because I didn't want people to be able to distance it. And I wanted to make it as far-flung as possible because climate change doesn't look the same everyplace. In some places it's a drought, in some places it's a flood. In a lot of places it's a forest fire. and so I wanted to be able to, move around the globe and show people how those changes were gonna affect life on earth.

Greg Dalton: And last year's film, Don't Look Up, used the immediacy of a rapidly approaching comet threatening to destroy life on earth as an allegory for climate change. What did you think of that device as a way of getting audiences to recognize the immediacy and the directness of climate coming at us?

Scott Z. Burns: I should preface this by saying I'm a big Adam McKay fan and I'm friendly with him and I love what the guy is about. And he keeps us laughing and learning, and that is an incredible feat. You know, that movie I think did a great job of using a metaphor for lack of a better word for a meteor. I guess it's a meteorphor to sort of stand in for climate change, although it can actually be standing in for almost anything in someone's life that they refuse to recognize has an impact. I loved what he did in that movie because of its look at human inaction. And there are other movies and literature and things that take on the end of the world, you know, because as any kind of dramatist you want to see, where does this go? What's the logical end of climate change? And I wasn't that interested in the logical end. I was interested in something far more immediate, like what Dorothy Fortenberry, who I worked with on the show, and I call the messy middle, you know, sort of the second act of climate change, which is how do we live through this? Because long before anyone, you know, before we'll all die from it, we’ll have an opportunity to live with it. And it is how we live with it and how we live with each other that's going to help us discover a lot of solutions, and a lot of fascinating stories about ourselves, our families, our faiths, our comforts, all of our appetites.

Greg Dalton: Right. I just want to compliment you on what you achieved in this because I found a lot of characters finding their way through this messy middle that I cared about and found interesting as well as a rich foundation of, factual basis of, like what's really happening. The policy, the technology, the sixth extinction, etc. I'm finding it really, really rich. However, as you know, Hollywood doesn't include energy and climate very much in scripted entertainment. Why do you think that is?

Scott Z. Burns: Look, I think the things that are science based are frightening to executives who have green light power in our business, which is sort of absurd. And I think problems without solutions sort of suggests that there aren't any heroes. And those narratives are narratives that I think have been put out certainly by the oil companies themselves frequently by certain media outlets. We have been taught to believe that this problem is way too big to change. We've also been taught that all of the solves likely are the denial of our appetites. And so, you're looking at a problem that says you can't have any fun, and pretty much no matter what you do as an individual nothing's gonna change anything. So, those are the pre-existing narratives that I think you walk into a room with as a screenwriter and the person across the desk from you has a tendency to say, yeah, this is depressing and it turns people off because it just makes them feel bad about themselves. And so, that whole meeting I just described to you, has to be rethought. And it can be rethought. And so, we went into this saying we just want to make stories, right. Like, you know, again, Dorothy Fortenberry had a great point. The shows that start coming down the pike at us in 5, 10 years that don't take into account climate change, those are science fiction shows, okay, not ours. You know a show that's a real show, and this is what I said to our writers’ room early on: What does Romeo and Juliet look like in 2042? What does it look like when the farms in Verona are failing and these families have issues and there's, you know, people coming from places where there's drought. Like what if we look at the stories we know and love that have taught us how to be a society and we change the climate behind? them. So that was really what I went in and pitched because we need to recognize that the climate behind all of our stories is changing. That's not up to me. That's not a dramatic choice, that's reality.

Greg Dalton: You are a big fan of Norman Lear who got us to care about things using humor, serious topics, racism, etc. There is some subtle humor in Extrapolations, but mostly I'm finding it pretty serious. How do you weigh how to approach humor in something that's so heavy?

Scott Z. Burns: If I could go back and change one thing, there were some episodes we had in mind that we didn't lead with that if I'm given a second season, I would love to explore. Humor opens up people, I think there is even evidence put forth by neuroscientists that your brain opens up and pathways open up when people are laughing, that aren't there in the face of, drama, I think, humor doesn't happen in us early in the same part of the brain as some of our other reactions to things. Look, at the end of the day, I have no illusions about what our show had to be, we had to be entertainment. We are not making a documentary, and people have a lot of choices. It wasn't like this was supposed to be a public service announcement. We wanted to be thought of as entertainment. We want people to, you know, to stick with us and hit next episode because they saw something that stuck with them.

Greg Dalton: Right. It's not preachy. It's not predictable and preachy the way so many. docs and others are. Hope is often at the center of climate conversations. Some say we need hope to avoid surrender. Others confide, ‘I don't have hope, but I can't say that in public, so I fake it.’ Where are you on hope?

Scott Z. Burns: I feel like I've been dancing with hope for about 20 some years now. Al Gore and I used to talk about hope. I have sort of a reaction to this issue that comes from having played sports all of my life, which is hope without a strategy doesn't work in my experience. I had a knee injury this year. And I've put on some weight. And I really hope I lose it. Now I can hope my way from french fried ice cream cone or I can hope my a** to the gym. And I think if I go to the gym and get active, then I am hopeful that I'll change something. Well, I think the same applies here. Hope is something that I think is vital once you've committed to taking action. So what I always tell people is, can we please replace hope with bravery, with courage, with action? That's what we need right now.

Greg Dalton: Yeah there can be tend to be a sort of passive element of hope. It's like, oh, I hope it will work out. I hope someone else, people working on it, will solve it.

Scott Z. Burns: And for me, I have a very dear Buddhist friend in New York who is a doctor, and he said, you know, hope is actually something You know, his Buddhist teachers have said is really destructive because it's, encouraging, a sort of forfeiture of self that isn't really the point of Buddhism. It's not, you know, the lesson is not to detach from the effort, I want to put forth all of the effort I can on the things and people that matter to me. Do I recognize I don't have complete control over the result? Of course. but like to me that's, you know, that's adulthood.

Greg Dalton: I think I've heard you say before, hope as an anesthesia makes you uncomfortable. I think a lot of people is asking for hope are actually asking for comfort or anesthesia, And especially when children come into it, you know, care for children and future generations are a big part of the climate concern. One of the actors in Extrapolations, Sienna Miller, represents that in one gut wrenching scene where she talks about the effect of extreme heat days or EHDs.

[START PLAYBACK]

NURSE: Does he understand the severity of his condition? Have you told him?

Sienna Miller: Does he understand he could die from a sunny day? No, I haven’t quite found the words for that. He knows he has summer heart, he knows what an EHD is and that he needs to avoid them. He calls them empty heart days instead of extreme heat so yeah he understands that he needs to be careful. (:32)

[END PLAYBACK]

Greg Dalton: So what does that scene represent about the future we're creating and how we talk to our children about it?

Scott Z. Burns: I want to answer that two ways. The first way I want to answer it is as, you know, Sienna’s director in that moment and how we approach that as a piece of drama because again I want to emphasize that we don’t when we were working on telling a story think about the outcome. We think about what is a playable moment for Sienna and what rings authentic. Now, Sienna is a mother and so she has some really strong feelings about communicating to her children. And, you know, what can you tell them that doesn't scare them but what you need to tell them to make them aware. And so, how do you go into a scene as a mom and think about what you need to share about reality to have an authentic relationship with your child and how can you frame that? And it does go back to the hope thing, teaching them hope and saying it's gonna be okay. That's not cool anymore. That doesn't work. And that will end up, I think, having a lot of young people resent us.

Greg Dalton: Yeah, it doesn't build trust.

Scott Z. Burns: Yeah. And so lying to your child obviously can't be the right thing. And that was really the direction going into the scene that she has with the nurse is, you know, this nurse figure is an opportunity for you to struggle with this. It's another adult that you can confide in about the shame you might have felt about lying to your child.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. Coming up, the connection between capitalism and climate disruption:

Scott Z. Burns: It's easy for me to imagine that someone will go okay, well yeah, the ice is melting from the top of the world and yes, that's tragic, but my God, look at the minerals. We could get those and create new wealth.

Greg Dalton: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Greg Dalton: This is Climate One. I’m Greg Dalton. Let’s get back to my conversation with Scott Z. Burns, writer and director of Extrapolations, a series on AppleTV+. The show presents the dark side of capitalism and human nature – corporations manipulating a female humpback whale so the species can be saved and monetized; pretending to save the Arctic in a scheme that’s really about a casino near the North Pole; a young woman standing up at Passover Seder and telling her father that people in Miami are working below living wage so others can play golf. I asked Scott Z. Burns how he thought about capitalism in writing this series, which airs on the platform of one of the largest and most iconic corporations in the world.

Scott Z. Burns: Well, I mean I think I started by not really thinking about capitalism. I thought about characters and people who could be truth tellers or people who are likely to encounter stories in their lives that were going to be so disquieting that they had to react. So, that sort of where I started was how do you give a problem to a story and then grow a hero out of the firmament of that problem. And I think that's what all of those characters have in common. For me, a long time ago and you're gonna know the answer to this. The author who wrote the book This Changes Everything.

Greg Dalton: Naomi Klein.

Scott Z. Burns: Right. Naomi Klein said, I heard her speak once in New York about how climate change is a symptom of capitalism. And that line is actually in the pilot of our show. And I think there is so much truth to that. But now we’re in a place where if you told me hey, Scott, here are two problems you've got to solve. Climate change and capitalism and you have 10 years. Ready, go. I don't know that we can root out capitalism. I really don't think that's realistic. I'm not saying she's wrong. I'm just saying, I don't know that the timetable that the planet and nature have provided for us. And so is capitalism the right tool to solve the problem? I don't know. I'm honestly not that smart. I'd love to hear smarter people give a point of view. What I do know is that it's the tool that's been stuck in all of our hands.

Greg Dalton: And some people would say, capitalism can move very quickly. Let's use it, harness it, in fact, speaking to characters, Matthew Rhys played a cold-blooded and murderous Soviet spy in the series The Americans. What is his character in Extrapolations and what does he illustrate that you think we will see in the future?

Scott Z. Burns: He is the evolution of the denier. When I made An Inconvenient Truth, there were still deniers walking the earth. I think most of them have gone extinct. although I'm sure some of them still wander around the U.S. Senate.

Greg Dalton: They've evolved to dismiss, delay. Yeah, they've changed their stripes.

Scott Z. Burns: Now I think what they've turned into are opportunists.

[START PLAYBACK]

They say ice sheet in Greenland is going to break down the middle.

Rhys: Right, we’ll build there next.

They say 3 meter sea level rise by end of century.

Rhys: They? They also said the same thing about Miami, all we did was make a fortune retrofitting the buildings. And guess what? When it goes up another couple inches, we’ll f**** retrofit again. And make even more money. Here’s what you need to know about global warming. It would all go to s*** at the end of the century, 100%. But we’ll be dead. We’ll have to miss it. But we’ll be smiling in gold-plated coffins designed by Kanye. (:33)

[END PLAYBACK]

Scott Z. Burns: And so, I think he is a new category of being that I think we're likely to see evolve, which is the climate opportunist. Who sees in these changes opportunities to profit on the reluctance of people to change? On the reluctance of people to recognize that they've got to rethink, you know, some of the ways they are living their lives. And so, he to me is you know I think a logical extension of where we’re seeing people right now. I mean it's easy for me to imagine that someone will go okay well yeah, the ice is melting from the top of the world and yes, that's tragic, but my God, look at the minerals. We could get those and create new wealth and boy, I bet we'll do something great, and we could but we probably won't.

Greg Dalton: Well, I interviewed the former Prime Minister of Greenland on a ship off the coast of Greenland, and he'd be very honest about the tourism and economic opportunities that are opening up for those people. And who are you know, white people further down to say that that's bad or wrong and judge them for that. Another scene that really was compelling for me was when Edward Norton in the Oval Office with the president and others, and Norton is talking to his ex-wife who was in a drone. A little bit of a spoiler, alert, you know, gone, rogue.

[START PLAYBACK]

Ed Norton: Nobody was trying to change the climate. We didn’t even think we had that capacity. We didn’t know better, but we do now.

Gita: And yet human behavior doesn’t change. The sky is easier to reengineer than the human brain, John.

Norton: Exactly. And if you tell that greedy monkey brain it’s cooled off and everything’s okay it’s going to say give me a little bit more, just let me burn a little bit more. Just let me mortgage a little more of the children’s future so that I can juice this quarterly balance sheet. I just need that one.

[END PLAYBACK]

Greg Dalton: I'm curious what you are saying in that scene. And if you agree that it's easier to change other things other than ourselves.

Scott Z. Burns: Well, I mean, this may seem cowardly on my part. but you know, I feel like it's the role of art to raise questions. And I always worry about answering them for the audience because that starts to feel like propaganda.

Greg Dalton: So your goal in that case was to raise the question in how people talk about it and think about it.

Scott Z. Burns: Yeah. Look, I think it's an important question and when I was writing that scene I really struggled with it for a long-time kind of going well, you know I had spoken to a number of people who are expert in geoengineering. And I do think geoengineering will be irresistible to people who cling to the status quo. And yet you know what Al Gore told me almost 20 years ago was the definition of the science experiment is an experiment you can repeat in different parts of the world and get the same results. This is not a science experiment. We will do this once. We will never repeat it and we don't know what will happen. And if we’re at a place where we are so desperate that we are going to re-engineer the sky, that's terrifying to me. And yet, you know, when I speak to the people who have, are building companies, I mean, you can Google it right now. There are a lot of startups that are really focused on us. That sort of speaks to our love of the technological fix and the solve and you know, and I think that is sort of how you get to Hiroshima.

Greg Dalton: And the show depicts plenty of fanciful technologies and autonomous personal helicopter you mentioned didn't have flying cars, but it's very close to a flying car. It doesn't drive around, but, Sienna goes around in a pretty cool, autonomous drone helicopter like goggles that display virtual and augmented reality. There's a zero-emission cargo plane and other clean technologies. You don't have a personal view about technology, but how are you presenting technology? in the series.

Scott Z. Burns: You know, in my line of work, we call that world building. and I think we need, you know, my view is we needed to do just enough so that people could consider that we were marching through time because the conceit of Extrapolations was to start in 2037 and end in 2070. And so there was like a constant need to refresh and you know, all I could think about is, my smart phone and how it was bigger and it flipped and then it got smaller and now it's gotten bigger. It's got a camera. so there was that part of it. And then there are other things that were fun to think about, like delivery drones and that getting automated. And I was like, whoa, if you can do a delivery drone, you can probably do a self-driving helicopter. There are already are self-driving cars, it was the same exercise of looking at the technology that exists now and extrapolating into the future and thinking about, you know, what is a phone call? what's what's a window, which to me, you know, and again, this is a larger thing. that I would love to have, be its own episode. I do think smart windows have a very good shot at catching on, and it terrifies me that you could live in a place and begin to create an artificial outside world that started at your window. And does that make it harder for you to relate to the degradation of what's going on for real in the world outside your window. And is there going to be an interesting moment where someone starts saying, well, wow, if we show someone a polar bear, on their window. Or a lion. Or a tiger, what is that do in their brain that's different from a safari? And are we ready to let go of lions and tigers? And man, that's just that's beyond heartbreaking to me.

Greg Dalton: Right. yeah. Right. will we accept simulated nature and allow real nature to die? Geoengineering and kind of, you know, driving extinction raises the question of, humankind of playing God on the planet. Now I'd like to explore the moral aspects of this. You've described Extrapolations as a meditation on the uncertainty we face and Buddhist would say, we need to detach ourselves from specific outcomes. Daveed Diggs plays a rabbi who is called spiritual first responder in the climate crisis, a term I love. So how do you see the spiritual dimensions of climate and how is it reflected in the series through Daveed Diggs and others?

Scott Z. Burns: So, one of the other executive producers on the show is a really amazing woman named Dorothy Fortenberry, who had worked on Handmaid's Tale but is a very committed climate activist. And Dorothy is also a very devout Catholic. And I come from a Jewish family although not a big synagogue-going practicer. I am aware of my Jewish identity for sure. and so, we would have conversations and you know she really, she gave me a copy of the Pope's encyclical towards the beginning of our time together, you know, said this is one of my favorite books. And it's a beautiful thing to read the Pope pointing out our responsibility to stewardship of the planet and to the creation. And although I may not be a Catholic, I think the sustenance that one gets from nature that the reminder that you're an animal that that there should be seasons. You and I have both gone to Alaska. Since my experience going there to clean otters I try and go back every couple years and go kayaking. For me, that is spirituality, you know, like that's how I connect is I go back into the world and I look at what's there and what's beautiful and what's worth it, and what is soothing and what teaches you about life and what teaches you about death. And it is terrifying to think about that point of reference, the availability of that experience. For that to vanish, it's already not available to, you know, people because of income, which is a tragedy. and so, you know, For me, the spiritual component of this is huge. You know, like we are of this planet and we need to connect with it. And I know that sounds like, you know, hippie bull****. But it's really not. I, really, you know, there's plenty of science to back up what is helpful, about, you know, connecting with, you know, with place,

Greg Dalton: Right. Many government and corporate leaders say that incremental progress is being made, and we can look in the news every day for like, oh, solar are growing, EVs are selling. The Willow project recently approved in Alaska was smaller than it could've been, for example. What do you think of incrementalism?

Scott Z. Burns: I think incrementalism is not the right strategy for an adversary that you can’t negotiate with. The planet doesn't really care about incrementalism all that much. Maybe you slow things down but you're not really making the changes that the science has told us to make. A friend of mine who works in politics says, the Democrats are eager to compromise the Republicans are eager to show that they won't compromise. So, you live in a town and there's a river going through the middle and the Democrats want to build a bridge and the Republicans say we’re not gonna spend taxpayer money on a bridge. So, they fight, and they whatever and then the Democrat comes back proud of the negotiation and the compromise, and they build half a bridge. And everybody drives into the river and dies. So, like that seems to happen a lot around this issue in my opinion. And that's not gonna work here, you know. like we made all these promises to each other in Paris and my understanding is we've already overshot Paris. So, all the good feelings I had about Paris is been replaced by bad feelings about people not keeping their promises or fudging the data. So, as the show says at the end of the day the problem is gonna be us. And I worry that incrementalism isn't an indicator of urgency that we need to be saying, you know, I'd rather someone say to the oil companies, we'll give you incredible discounts on taxes if you rush. on technology that is going to take carbon out of the air like that to me, would be something more profound.

Greg Dalton: Exxon recently said they see huge revenue and profits and decarbonization in doing that. Perhaps surpassing petroleum. not a lot of trust for what Exxon says on this topic, but that was really interesting. You gave Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning to many people who worked on the series, Extrapolations. Why, and what was the impact?

Scott Z. Burns: Yeah. I mean, for Frankl, you know, for people who don't know the book, Viktor Frankl wrote this book, you know, inside of a concentration camp, and he found ways to get through something I find much more immediately terrifying than climate change. And he was seeing people die all around him every day and knew that it was just a matter of his number being next. So like, I think if you can look to that book and see his strategies for coping, I think that that's a really great place for some people to start. The other day I was asked by somebody, do you think your show should have a warning in front of it? And I said, well, you know, I didn't say this but what I thought was when I watch a show that you know is a different show that is escaping and avoiding reality entirely. Do I get a disclaimer that says warning the hour you will now watch you know may lead you to believe that there's nothing bad happening outside? That's not true. So, no one is doing that. So, why is the onus on those of us who want to tell stories that show people how life might really be, why are we apologizing for our entertainment? Like I really don't understand the logic there. And yes, there is such a thing called you know, climate trauma, and I've been on panels and I've had these conversations and I am sure it's real and I'm sure I suffer from it. But here's what we did for self-care. We got up every day and we went to work and we made a show. And we talked about it and we talked about the issue and we built a community. And I can tell you that going to work every day with people who care about this issue, who talk about it, who think about it, who are engaged with it, laugh about it, cry about it sometimes, that made me feel better than anything I've done since An Inconvenient Truth. So that's one thing. The second thing is there is reason to be hopeful. You know, like when I recently spoke to Al Gore about the show, he again reiterated we have solutions for all of these problems, all of them, and will get more solutions the more we invest in these. What we don't yet have a solution for is for what you brought about what you brought up. a few, minutes ago, which is the problem is us. I mean, that's the final message of the show is will we solve our appetites, our greed, our empathy, all of those things. How do we come into agreement on those, and that is what will save us. It will save the planet. it'll save the critters. Like that to me is what I hope our show gets to.

Greg Dalton: Well, Scott Z. Burns, thank you so much for sharing your insights on Extrapolations with us today. Really appreciate it and congratulations on the series.

Scott Z. Burns: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Greg Dalton: On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about the role of climate in TV and film. Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe wherever you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard-- AND it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Brad Marshland is our senior producer; Our managing director is Jenny Park. Ariana Brocious is co-host, editor and producer. Austin Colón is producer and editor. Megan Biscieglia is our production manager. Wency Shaida [Shey-duh] is our development manager, Ben Testani is our communications manager. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. I’m Greg Dalton.

3:00 Anna Jane Joyner on why there aren’t more climate stories in Hollywood
8:30 Different forms of climate placement in narrative storytelling
24:30 Scott Z. Burns on why Extrapolations is set in the future
28:00 Exploring the “messy middle” and “second act” of climate disruption
33:30 The role of hope in climate storytelling
41:30 Capitalism in Extrapolations
50:00 Spiritual responses to the climate crisis

Play

Coping with Climate through Music

Otto Pilot — Fri, 20 May 2022 07:01:00 +0000

Coping with Climate through Music

05/20/2022

Coping with Climate Disruption

Music and social movements have historically gone hand in hand. Folk music played a unifying role for the labor movements in the United States. Music was central to the protests against the Vietnam War and in favor of Civil Rights. As more people become aware of the climate crisis, music is starting to reflect that.

Jayson Greene, contributing editor and former senior editor at Pitchfork and the author of the memoir Once More We Saw Stars, has seen increasing numbers of musicians processing the climate crisis through their work. “I discovered so many different musicians who are making music and the common thread was a sort of desperation. This had gotten too far for them not to start speaking on it. And I think that as you know, and just as art imitates life or let you know in every other respect that mirrors the public awareness of this issue.”

But there is still no one song or artist unifying the climate movement the way music has for other movements. Why are more artists not raising the alarm over the impending climate catastrophe?

Tamara Lindeman is a Toronto-based songwriter and singer who performs under the name The Weather Station. Her album Ignorance contains many themes related to climate. She believes there are multiple reasons why popular music hasn’t explored the climate crisis more deeply:

“Part of what's wrong with this issue is people have so many personal feelings about it that keep them away from that feeling of indignance or of power or of a collective experience. I think that's why we don't have the climate anthem yet that people can jump onto, because there are so many barriers.”

Rather than attempting an anthem, Lindeman’s music expresses her personal, emotional reactions. She remembers first being worried about the climate when she was very young, “I mean I don't remember when I first heard the words, I mean global warming was what it was called at the time. But I think my parents told me pretty young because I do remember being really, really afraid in a very child way of this idea of the natural world changing irreparably.”

Jayson Greene describes his own beliefs about the power of music to process emotion. “This is firmly how I believe music works. I think it's entirely a response we formulate to the feelings we don't know how to process. And yeah, so that's what I meant when I said that music is the hum our feelings make as we live... And we’re all feeling pretty bad about what we see.”

Greene doesn’t believe artists can force a message on listeners, though. “I do believe that music is not a great container for political statements. You can put them in but they leak out the minute you give them to somebody. You can't believe that they're going to receive the message that you loaded in there like a message in a bottle because music is so personal, it speaks to that person.”

Lindeman hopes music can have a unique impact on listeners, “I definitely believe really strongly in lyrics and in the intimate relationship between singer and listener. I think there's a lot of room for vulnerability because if you hear something and you’re alone maybe you can take it in a different way than you could if it's like a speech or a newscast.”

Guests

Tamara Lindeman

Musician, The Weather Station

Jayson Greene

Contributing Editor, Pitchfork

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious. Music often reflects the feelings of the broader society. So in the face of failing government action on climate, why don’t we have more climate protest songs?

Tamara Lindemen: Part of what's wrong with this issue is people have so many personal feelings about it that keep them away from that feeling of indignance or of power. (:15)

Ariana Brocious: And yet more and more musicians are creating work to help them process their own grief and anxiety.

Jayson Greene: I started to notice just how many new projects all across the spectrum. People were singing about the climate crisis in a newly direct way (:11)

Ariana Brocious: How do the personal feelings of the artist translate to the listener?

Tamara Lindman: There's a lot of room for vulnerability because if you hear something and you’re alone maybe you can take it in a different way than you could if it's like a speech or a newscast. (:11)

Ariana Brocious: Coping with Climate through Music. Up next on Climate One.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious, filling in for Greg Dalton.

Music and political or social movements go hand in hand. Nelson Mandela described it like this: “Music… uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope… Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.”

If there were ever a threat that needed to defy politics and rally everyone, it would be the climate crisis. It will affect all of us, though not equally. Despite the global implications of the climate crisis, there isn’t significant mention of it in popular music.

This episode is supported in part by the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

Tamara Lindeman is a Toronto-based songwriter and singer who performs under the name The Weather Station. Climate was a central theme of her 2021 album Ignorance. In the song Atlantic, she sings: “Thinking I should get all this dying off of my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines. Does it matter if I see it? No really, can I not just cover my eyes?”

Thinking I should get all this dying off of my mind,

I should really know better than to read the headlines.

Does it matter if I see it?

No really, can I not just cover my eyes?”

[End Playback]

Ariana Brocious:I asked her why the climate crisis can make us want to avoid the news or ignore what is happening.

PROGRAM PART 1

Tamara Lindeman: It's interesting because you know I feel like I would give the stock answer which I feel like has become a bit of a narrative of like, oh, our human minds can’t understand the scale of the crisis is so vast it moves too slowly. But I actually don't believe any of that. I really don't anymore. I think it's honestly just because of course we want to look away from anything dark and heavy. You know, but it's no different than, you know, Canadians and Americans turning away from the history of genocide or racism. I mean it's like we tend to turn away from these frightening realities until something or someone forces us to look. And I really think that the reason why we turn away from climate is not because we can't understand it, it's just because there isn't enough cultural and social pressure to look. And I think that other reason is that because for most people they associate this particular issue with the issue of like individual responsibility and individual action. And because most people live in fossil fueled, you know, powered societies, the cost of looking most people kind of consider the cost of looking as if I look at this, then I'll have to you know go off the grid and change my entire life. And most people can't do that; they can't afford to. So, I think that's the other major barrier that stops people from engaging is this association with if I look at this. I mean it's like I think a lot of Canadians didn't want to look at sort of genocide and indigenous issues because we felt that the cost of looking would be oh I can't be Canadian then. But that’s not what is necessarily asked it's the looking needs to happen first, So, I think those are the barriers that's my perspective. But in terms of that song, I wasn’t trying to do anything, I just happened to write it and then be like that's a real truthful thing that I felt, and that I'm acknowledging in the song. And I feel that if I acknowledge my own less than fantastic feelings. Everyone else will be able to acknowledge theirs. I think something else I was trying to get out there was the way that previous generations all through human history no one has had to carry the full knowledge of something like this ever. And that is an element where you know holding all of that in our minds is really hard for us as creatures.

Ariana Brocious: Certainly, yeah. I think that there's a lot touching on those things like systemic racism and genocide. Those are other major things that it's easy to look away from or try to sweep under as you say, because they're extremely difficult to face like climate. And I think the personal responsibility aspect is really interesting because you know there's kind of different schools of thought, there’s on the one hand, Americans certainly and Canadians probably, first world nations have a bigger carbon footprint have more responsibility than others collectively for contributing to the climate crisis. And yet there are of course these major actors, oil companies and others that have been way more responsible in direct terms for contributing and creating the actual emissions that go into the sky. And so, I wanted to visit another song of yours as I understand an article about Exxon Mobil inspired you to write the song Robber. And let’s hear a little bit of it and then again, we can chat about kind of maybe the role of that in terms of the songwriting itself.

[Start Playback]

No, the robber don't hate you, he had permission

Permission by words, permission of thanks

Permission by laws, permission of banks

White table cloth dinners, convention centers

It was all done real carefully.

[End Playback]

Ariana Brocious: And so, there you are describing, you know, he had permission of thanks permission by laws and banks. And so, if society in one way or another has given these corporations permission to pollute to you know put all these carbon emissions in the sky, we’re all guilty for that on some level for allowing it. So, how do we handle that?

Tamara Lindeman: I think like everything is an ecosystem and everything is connected. And I think there are so many ways in which you know social license is granted to people who, you know, for example, work at oil companies. And you know that's why a lot of activists argue that we need to revoke their social license. But I think that line I wasn't necessarily talking about like what do we do about it, you know, obviously I have lots of ideas like let’s cut off oil companies’ ability to advertise, to trade on the stock market. You know what I mean like you have to -- yeah, like just cut them out of you know in every way shape and form. But I think that what I was really talking about there is like why is this possible? You know what I mean like why is it allowed at all? And I think what I was talking more about was this idea of a wrongdoer or a villain. And who do we think is a bad person, you know, how do we think about these concepts and like what I was trying to capture in that song was my own I guess naïveté or like understanding of the world and how it shifts when you realize like it's not just that everybody wants to drive a car. It's that like there are actually people who have committed genuine acts of not just not doing the right thing but like actively trying to stop the right thing from occurring, right? So, I was thinking of like who is that person? And this idea that that act, you know, as was, has been carried out by so many people like politicians and people at the API and people at Exxon, that act is encouraged. It’s not just that it's not seen as bad. It's actively encouraged And that's something that like I don't know if I understand or I know how you know; I know how I myself feel about it. But I think it is more a question of like just what a strange world we live in. Like just how bizarre this story is really.

Ariana Brocious: Right. And I think that there's a growing awareness now and a much greater public awareness of the role of these companies than there used to be, right. So, there is less at least in among kind of a general population whether that's resulted much in any actual actions limiting their social license to operate, you know, arguable. I read that when you are a kid you had trouble sleeping at night because of climate change and that some of those heavy emotions actually made you avoid the issue for a time. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Tamara Lindeman: Yeah. I mean I don't remember when I first heard the words, I mean global warming was what it was called at the time. But I think my parents told me pretty young because I do remember being really, really afraid in a very child way of this idea of the natural world changing irreparably. You know where the idea of the seasons changing and it really did frighten me on a visceral level as I think it does any child that comes in contact with that idea. I just think for a child of the 80s maybe I learned about it fairly young. But yeah it did keep me up at night. It was a very a fear that I couldn't manage. And then through my life, I think, like many people of my generation it's been off and on experience, right. You go through a phase where you're thinking about it a lot and then you go through a phase where you're not. And part of for me really coming to terms with facing the climate crisis as it truly is and will be part of that was looking at my own life and the ways in which you know through chunks of my adult life I had sort of hidden from that knowledge or hidden myself from it because I didn't want to think about it. And I talk about that a lot because I think that's a very common experience and I think it's what probably most people are doing day-to-day. I always contrast and think of our response to the Covid pandemic which here in Canada has been very robust and common sense and scientific. And the average adult I know is constantly thinking about COVID-19 and the pandemic and what’s gonna happen next and what’s happening and what legislation is occurring. And yet, most people I know are not thinking about climate at all. So, I think when I look back on my history of avoiding those news articles as I say I bring it up because I think it's very common.

Ariana Brocious: I wanna ask, you know, did your parents have good tools to help you navigate that? And I don't mean so much their parenting style or anything, just that it's overwhelming for adults as well as kids. And I'm wondering if did those discussions with your parents maybe change as you grow older and had a slightly you know older understanding of what global warming or climate change meant.

Tamara Lindeman: No, I don't think they did not to be negative about it. But you know I think that they didn't know what to say or think about it. And I think too it was an earlier time where it was less prevalent in the news and you know, but yeah, I think that my parents didn't really when I think about being very young and being really afraid of it I don't think my parents had any idea how to respond to that it may be weren’t expecting that perhaps. I remember my mom talking to me about being a child of the Cold War you know and the nuclear threat, but that didn't really put my mind at ease, yeah. It doesn’t really make it better.

Ariana Brocious: You mention naïveté and it's interesting that this album which deal so much with climate and climate grief you’ve titled Ignorance. And I'm curious if you can explain the thinking there.

Tamara Lindeman: I mean there's a lot of like layers to that title. And that's part of why I chose it because there are so many different meanings and I couldn't really pick one as being you know, the more important one over all of the others. And it’s interesting that that album came out during the pandemic and really resonate during the pandemic because I think one of the strongest threads of it, you know, when I wrote it, and when I made it was it was 2019. You know, and the world was really just charging forward into the 2020s as though nothing was happening. And ignorance of the climate crisis is so widespread and it's so common. And think what I was really trying to hit in that record, is the moment where you allow yourself to break through that veil of not wanting to know not wanting to see and not wanting to look and then you can't not. But I think I also was thinking about how ignorance works in the world. I think of misogyny, for example or racism or climate where it's like all these things are powered by a sort of like manufactured ignorance where we say like I know what a woman is and you’re that. And whenever you have one of these ideas between you and reality it creates a warping where you can’t actually see what's in front of you. And I think with climate there are so many of those that are making it difficult for the average person to see the most obvious thing because there are these sort of ignorances that are like almost like physical things in the way.

Ariana Brocious: You’re listening to a Climate One conversation about coping with climate through music. If you missed a previous episode, or want to hear more of Climate One’s empowering conversations, subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your pods. Coming up, how should musical artists use their platforms to advocate for climate action?

Tamara Lindeman: I definitely believe that you know there's lots of moments where you know musicians use their cultural power to push forward social issues and this should be no different.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious, and we’re talking about the role of music in the climate crisis with Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station.

The Weather Station’s album Ignorance deals with many themes related to the climate emergency. One of the most prominent themes is climate grief. Yet, the music itself doesn’t sound grief-stricken. I asked Lindeman how emotion influenced her songwriting.

PROGRAM PART 2

Tamara Lindeman: Yeah, I mean I think that was always my intention for that record to be kind of like in, and it's the wrong word but in my mind, I just like thought of it like a dance record or like you know have this grooving rhythm. And, part of that was that I was thinking about how popular songs if they’re well-made they're very powerful and they're very, they're very palatable and they kind of move through space in this way that something more avant garde can’t, you know. And I kind of love the idea of lyrics as like the passenger you know on this thing that just moves through people. And so, I thought it would be interesting to sort of combine some of these feelings that are more tangled and gnarly with something so approachable. So, that was absolutely my intention. But I think to that you know I think the only song I've really written or maybe I've only written like two or three songs that really, I would say like about climate grief like in particular like that specific feeling. And I think like the song on the album Trust is very much that you know that's a very heavy song and it was hard. I still haven’t been able to play that song live really because it’s too heavy. So, you know, that’s still part of why. But, yeah, I think, you know, climate feelings like there are so many you know and grief is only one of them. And I think the album is about so many of those feelings.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, I really like what you said there about lyrics riding along like a melody or a song that carries people and reaches people just on the music alone. I think there's a lot of really good examples of that and you can think of like you know protest songs and others that have if you stop and listen to the lyrics you think oh my gosh this is actually about something much heavier, you know, but the tone carries you it’s like, you know. So, social and political movements have this history of being strongly linked with music and musicians themselves from the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement. And I'm curious how you see yourself in the context of the climate movement in that sense.

Tamara Lindeman: I don't see myself as being a part of a movement at all, but I definitely think and hope that I'm playing some role out there in the world and I think too like having so much opportunity to talk about this in interviews, which is really surprised me. I mean that’s something that I feel like I've ended up in spaces that aren’t the climate activist world you know talking in the music section of the newspaper instead of the science section. And I think that's part of what I've been trying to do and I think I really want to if I think about what I want to do next and like or like what type of activism I would like to engage in. I think it's more about reaching people who are outside of that movement because I think that the movement unfortunately hasn't been able to reach enough people. But I do think that the average person and statistics bear this out. The average person cares deeply about this issue. And if I can show up at, you know, on their doorstep in a Spotify playlist then that's great.

Ariana Brocious: We've been questioning here at Climate One why there aren’t more climate anthems, right, or sort of songs that kind of represent the movement help galvanize people in the way that there have been for a lot of other movements. And, you know, you've written this album. I'm curious where you would place music along the spectrum of climate action from things like self-expression to actually encouraging others to act more directly.

Tamara Lindeman: Yeah, I mean it's hard to know right like I feel like the time when music really played a role in political movements, you know, like I think a lot of us sort of romanticize the 60s and yet like when you listen to some of those songs they’re really strange songs to be anthems. And I don't know what role music has to play. I do think that the reason that the fact that we don’t have a climate anthem or that we don’t have better protest songs on this issue I do think about how that reflects on how we view this issue. And I just really think so much that it just always comes down to our own barriers with this issue. You know, in particular where it's like you know when I think of great protest anthems, I think a lot about there's a lot of great like union anthems and a lot of great like workers’ rights and all of these things where it’s like people anything that can charge people up and make them feel indignant or angry or like powerful is often sort of the role of protest music of like a song that everyone can sing as they march. Like that sort of what traditionally protest music is about. And I think part of what's wrong with this issue is people have so many personal feelings about it that keep them away from that feeling of indignance or of power or of a collective experience. I think that's why we don't have the climate anthem yet that people can jump onto because there are so many barriers.

Ariana Brocious: The band The 1975 released a song in collaboration with Greta Thunberg. It's a pretty powerful piece. She states, “We have to acknowledge that the older generations have failed. All political movements in their current form have failed. But homo sapiens have not yet failed. Now is not the time for speaking politely, now is the time to speak clearly.” And after recording that collaboration the lead singer of The 1975 said, other artists didn't want to do it. Didn't want to record this collaboration with her, bigger artist than his group. So, why do you think that's the case that something like partnering with someone who's been such a leader in the movement didn’t appeal to bands that have maybe bigger stature?

Tamara Lindeman: That's interesting. I mean I think it just comes down to once again I mean the fact that of having a carbon footprint. I mean, I think that and, you know, I think most bands probably don’t feel that they deserve to collaborate with someone like Greta, you know, because that's always the barrier, right. And I think that she is such wonderful speaker and so clear and she takes no prisoners. I'm sure everyone was just intimidated. And that's you know I'm not saying that's right I’m just saying that’s probably what happened.

Ariana Brocious: You mean, so obviously touring has a big carbon footprint itself and a research paper published in Popular Music followed five artists on their tours to track their carbon output and collectively they added the carbon equivalent of about 20 flights back and forth from New York to London in a period of six months. I mean is that what you're talking about where bands feel their own kind of climate guilt because of the work of touring and what impact that has or are there other things you think might be, in the way of them focusing on climate as a subject?

Tamara Lindeman: Yeah, that's specifically what I was to give was touring. And obviously like it does depend on the band and in what way they’re touring I mean, the van is better than a bus is better than a plane. But I'm sure, I’m sure. And I've had plenty of personal conversations with musicians and that's unanimously what everyone expresses is that they want to say something about it but they don't feel that they should because of touring. And I think that's why I personally am just like can we let go of that as an idea, not to say that emissions are like neutral or even okay but just like can we make it so that everyone can be vocal regardless of what they do, but I don't think we’re there yet.

Ariana Brocious: An open letter was released by the group Extinction Rebellion covering the hypocrisy that is often discussed when musicians broach the subject of the climate emergency. The letter reads:

Alongside these people who are already paying the price for our fossil fuelled economy, there are millions of children – called to action by Greta Thunberg – who are begging us, the people with power and influence, to stand up and fight for their already devastated future.

We cannot ignore their call. Even if by answering them we put ourselves in your firing line.The stories that you write calling us climate hypocrites will not silence us.

Ariana Brocious: The letter was signed by over one hundred celebrities including musicians Thom Yorke, Imogen Heap, David Byrne, Brian Eno and others. Let’s get back to my conversation with Tamara Lindeman. You hosted a series called Elephant in the Room where you discussed climate issues with other artists and musicians. what were those conversations like what did you all talk about?

Tamara Lindeman: It was really interesting. I only did it four times and it was really powerful every time and I really have been wanting to bring it back that sort of my hopefully, like when this record is done. My next project or potentially moving online, but I just find it so interesting like I find it so interesting how people respond to this issue. And a lot of it was what I wanted to do with that as I made it a live show because what I wanted was people to view each other's feelings in real life and confusions, right. Because a lot of people are like they have so much insecurity and shame, you know, and that was a big part of what I wanted to. But also, I wanted people to see others in their community expressing any climate feelings regardless what they were just because I wanted to get it all out in the open. yeah for sure other artists I know definitely have struggled on how to talk about this issue and how to be, you know, especially on social media or whatever it is. A lot of people feel very whereas they feel very comfortable voicing concerns about social justice online. Climate is one that they just they can't do it like there's like a barrier a lot of different barriers. Those conversations were more private conversations that I’ve had with people as to why, but you know I think it's just such a big multifaceted issue, and there's so many, there’s so much flak you’re gonna get so that’s why. I mean there are a lot of reasons but those are some. Though I will say that a lot of people in the past couple years who had never voiced anything on it have voiced things about it . There's definitely been a real resurgence of people I know and artists I know are really starting to show up for sure.

Ariana Brocious: Yeah, you know, I think about we talked about the power of like protest songs in some of the earlier social movements. But, you know, you can also just think about the social capital that a lot of really big artists have and how many people they have paying attention to them. And it is kind of striking to me that more of them don't use their platform for this issue because it does affect all of us globally and there is a real opportunity it would seem to communicate with people who actually are in some cases, depending on what kind of music can really cut across a broad spectrum of people too, politically, ideologically. So, I’m kind of just wanting to return again to what you think the power is of music specifically and musicians to create change and possibly drive action around climate.

Tamara Lindeman: Yeah, I mean I think that it's like almost like two separate powers. Like I think music itself the power of music is how intimate it can be. You know, because we listen on headphones. You know, we listen, the words and music go directly to us and there's no intermediary. And I think that's a very powerful force and I can think of so many things in life that I learned through a song or I thought I learned through a song. And so, I definitely believe really strongly in lyrics and in the intimate relationship between singer and listener. I think there's a lot of room for vulnerability because if you hear something and you’re alone maybe you can take it in a different way than you could if it's like a speech or a newscast. So, I think that as time goes on, and people are beginning to write more about climate in music. I do have hope that that will you know, maybe a song makes it through somewhere where like a speech could not, you know, because it's so intimate. And I think that but I think that music you know ultimately like it has to it's an emotional medium it has to talk to the emotions and I think it's like finding where the emotions are that need to be witnessed is like the interesting part of if I think about climate music I guess. And then musicians themselves like absolutely musicians have a platform and especially big musicians have a lot of cultural power. And I definitely believe that you know there's lots of moments where you know musicians use their cultural power to push forward social issues and this should be no different. And I really hope that more musicians do show up on the issue and show up in meaningful ways and use their cultural capital to talk about it

Ariana Brocious: Tamara Lindeman is a musician and singer-songwriter behind The Weather Station. Thank you so much for joining us today on Climate One.

Tamara Lindeman: Thank you.

Music: in

Intro to second Station ID break:

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. Coming up, a critic gives his take on the state of climate messaging in music

Jayson Greene: As the news grew more and more dire it worked its way deeper into everyday people's subconsciousness and it started making its way out into the art just like your worries show up in your bad dreams.

Ariana Brocious: That’s up next, when Climate One continues.

Ariana Brocious: This is Climate One. I’m Ariana Brocious. Climate as a theme in popular music has been largely absent until recently. As more and more people are experiencing the effects of the climate emergency, music is reflecting that reality.

Jayson Greene is contributing editor and former senior editor at Pitchfork and the author of the memoir Once More We Saw Stars. He wrote a piece titled What Can Music Do During Climate Collapse? Where he listened to over 20 hours of music contained climate as a theme. In that piece Greene wrote, “Music is the sound of human activity on Earth, after all, the hum our feelings make as we live.”

Climate One host Greg Dalton asked him what music has meant to his life, and how it helps process emotions related to climate.

PROGRAM PART 3

Jayson Greene: I think that I was trying to wrestle with just that question because I had noticed that many, many, many artists were newly addressing climate in their music. When that sort of thing happens especially if your job is to listen to 5, 10 new albums a week and think about what it is that you’re hearing it's very noticeable it happens, you know, it might not be as noticeable if you pick up one song one album you’re listening to this artist, but I started to notice just how many new projects, whether they were commissioned song cycles by string quartets or whether they were albums of rock by singer-songwriter independent indie rock acts, you know, all across the spectrum. People were singing about the climate crisis in a newly direct way, a newly frank way and in some cases, a newly brutal way given reflecting in some way the brutality of the headlines. And I couldn't help but turn from there to ask myself whether or not I had considered whether or not music, which was my number one emotional support in life that isn't another human being. I mean when it comes to things that I rely on to feel like I know where my place in the world is and to feel safe and to feel comforted: my wife, my kid and then it's music.

Greg Dalton: This is quite different. in your fabulous piece What Can Music Do During Climate Collapse? You write “Environmentalism as a thematic concern has been nearly vacant from the mainstream stage for the last two generations.” So, contrast that with you notice a sudden burst of creativity in climate awareness and that followed a real void.

Jayson Greene: I didn't know that until I started examining the outburst of new art and I mean now we’re in the year 2022 and I'm thinking about music that's first started surfacing around 2016. When I went to sort of track back how recent this sort of explosion, if I could find a singular point in these things aren't that simple. I was really struck that year by a project by the singer-songwriter Anohni, formerly of Antony and the Johnsons. Anohni, she released a project with the very frank all capital letters, title, HOPELESSNESS, and the first track was called 4 Degrees, and on that song Anohni howls ”it's only 4 degrees it’s only 4 degrees.” And Anohni has, a similar wrenching pleading emotional quality that you might associate with a classic singer like say Nina Simone. So, when this person is sort of howling in that voice about how it's only 4 degrees and I want to see the animals starve is a bitter sort of quality to the lyrics where Anohni is almost like being a Cassandra reeling off all these scenarios and bitterly ironically is insisting that she wants them. It's almost as if to say, bring the destruction down upon us. And it was so stark its power in its visceral anger that it just cut straight through. And I don't know for sure whether or not Anohni’s song and it was only one song on that album that addressed the climate crisis specifically but that song to me, has assumed the quality of the sort of opening salvo where it seems to me that after that song I started noticing many new projects where people were not just singing about the environment and I think this gets at the crucial distinction that you are asking about where you said you noticed that you know I had written environmentalism had disappeared from the main stage. And I think what changed is that environmentalism has gone in the popular music sphere from being a sort of trendy topic to touch on if you want to record a simple and easy message song which had been the sort of song you might hear in popular music 20 years ago. Michael Jackson was someone who in the you know latter stages of his career recorded some very big budget, flashy protest songs about what was being done to mother earth. But you didn't see people grappling with it on an emotional individual level, and I think if I were to offer a hypothesis as to why, it's that as the news grew more and more dire it worked its way deeper into everyday people’s subconsciousness and it started making its way out into the art just like your worries show up in your bad dreams. And so, then you have people who were reckoning with true visceral hysteria and panic and fear, and all these really dark and intense feelings. The kind that are so powerful that they overwhelm us and they often render us unable to express ourselves by traditional means. And in some ways, I think this is what the impulse to make music is all about. It's to make sense of feelings that are too big, too bad, too good as well. I mean there’s lots of music made in joy. But as the news grew extreme and people’s awareness grew, I think it was inevitable somebody would stand up and start screaming you know whether or not they took the form of a music that sounded like a punk rock album or it sounded like Anohni or any of the other artists. Some cases it's actually a whisper. I discovered so many different musicians who are making music and the common thread was a sort of desperation. This had gotten too far for them not to start speaking on it. And I think that as you know, and just as art imitates life or let you know in every other respect that mirrors the public awareness of this issue. The transformation of global warming and the climate change alone, I think. I don't necessarily know how others have felt about that. I'm 44 years old. Global warming was something happening in the early in the 1990s. And by that I'm being deliberately ignorant. But global warming was a soft worry in my mind as a child. It was something that needed to be dealt with eventually and obviously the adults would take care of it because everyone knew it was a problem but no one expected to be affected by that in the 90s that I knew anyway, I certainly did not. And then it became more of an anxiety, but only if you really were the type of person who sought out hard news to read in efforts to inform yourself and this is the common theme I think with everyone you probably speak to about this is that it was easy to ignore.

Greg Dalton: So there is this cultural critical mass that happened and music captured and reflected that.

Jayson Greene: That's what I think happens with music all of the time. And this firmly how I believe music works. I think it's entirely a response we formulate to the feelings we don't know how to process. And yeah, so that's what I meant when I said that music is the hum our feelings make as we live. Because I really believe that's what it is. And we’re all feeling pretty bad about what we see. But yeah, I think that 20 years ago if you recorded an environmental anthem, you are liable to get people rolling their eyes at you for your self-importance. Because it was assumed, I think maybe because of people grandstanding in like in the popstar world that if you were just being grandiose and self-important. And, you know, people would make jokes about you in the same way that they used to make jokes about Bono, someone who was a rock star trying to save the planet. It wasn't a lingua franca of all of these different genres as you know as sort of it starting to become now.

Greg Dalton: You listen to about 20 hours of music about climate change what kind of spectrum is there from John Denver to, I don’t know, you know, protest anthems, they’re angry, and want radical punk rock change.

Jayson Greene: It was very clear to me when I look back, that although as like a mainstream concern environmentalism had basically disappeared from the you know the stage with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young in some ways. After that again, you get the occasional Beds Are Burning, Midnight Oil song. But what was interesting to me was to sort of go back through the years, what was happening in punk rock. And I remember that oh yes, the genre that was all about consumer waste and societal rot and the damage we do to our environment without thinking about it thoughtlessly is punk rock. Those are the things that punk rock was born to point out it was born of those conditions neglected you know urban places and kids who don't have work. And so, you have someone like Poly Styrene of the band X-Ray Spex who sang about climbing over mounds and mounds of polystyrene foam. I mean her name comes from polystyrene and she named herself that as a sort of ironic tribute. Fugazi sang about burning from the sky and the Dead Kennedys had songs about toxic waste dumps and about acid rain. So, then in metal you have an entire genre of metal bands who choose ecocide or veganism as their rallying cry. I think if you're not a metal listener and you're only familiar with metal from it sort of public awareness, you know, it's sort of image, you might not expect that like a thrash like a full-blown metal band like a hard-core metal band would be singing about how you shouldn't eat meat. But in fact, it's true that you have many bands basically that adhere to that idea. So, the more you look, the more you see that there is a you know, you just have to trace the throughline. One of the emotions underneath this you’ve spoken about is grief. Trying to come to terms with amidst the climate crisis.

Greg Dalton: You wrote the memoir Once More We Saw Stars where you discuss the unfathomable tragedy of losing your daughter. I cried when I read that book about what happened to your Greta. And so connect for us your capacity I just wonder how that hits you. And Greta is the iconic young leader of climate and you lost your Greta.

Jayson Greene: Well, you know, I didn't know who Greta Thunberg was when my daughter Greta was alive. My daughter was born in April 27, 2013 and she died on May 17, 2015. So, her life was very short. We lost her suddenly in a tragic accident. And after she was gone, I remember when I learned that there was a young girl who was standing up to world leaders and yelling in their faces that they needed to act that there was this unbelievably young and fearsomely, frighteningly charismatic and intelligent child who had assumed the mantle of the entire climate emergency. And I could not help but immediately see that her first name was the name of my daughter. And I had not met many people who were named Greta or had heard of many people. I mean it’s not uncommon, but it was just uncommon enough that it wasn't like you'd met 300 people with that name and could assign no significance to it at all. And I didn't entertain the thought at the time, mostly because it felt like a vaguely self-important connection for me to be making between my private loss of my daughter and the climate crisis and this girl who has no connection to me or to my family in any way or you know. But I remember, when she spoke to the UN I believe and she yelled “Shame on you.” I turned to somebody who knew me well and I said, if anyone's named Greta I'm glad it's her. So, for me that was a moment of private sort of a meeting of a place in me that had spent a long time learning how to process loss and meeting another part of me that was learning again freshly how to process new loss or the idea of loss. I think that we’re contending with people who are not directly affected right now by climate change in ways that are so obvious and so brutal that they can stare it in the face every day. I live in New York in Brooklyn and I live near the water, but my community doesn't look at that water every day and think about what's going to happen to them. Whereas I think in other places and other areas of the country and the world that’s much more of a way of life to live next to water to be near water to contend with what water can do to your environment. So, I don't live in the sort of ongoing awareness of the possibility of destruction that climate change poses to so many different places. And for me it exists in my mind climate change exists in my mind. I know it exists in the world but and I know that it's growing ever more urgent, unstoppable and in many if not most ways irreversible. And yet, I move through a world that feels like it's a perfectly preserved snow globe of what the world is without. I think that for many people who are trying to come to grips with their emotions, they’re looking around their world for evidence of the apocalypse that they know from reading must be coming their way. And I think that this describes the emotional state of a lot of people that might be fighting through confusion, despair, guilt, any number of complicated emotions they can’t process.

Greg Dalton: And as someone who's had to go through that kind of personal grief losing your Greta, what would be your advice on dealing with grief in general and climate grief in particular?

Jayson Greene: I have learned to grieve the loss of my daughter, and that meant that I had to come to grips with living happily in a world where something unspeakable happened. I had to learn to live in a world that could and had taken everything away. And that is the painful journey that all who lose a child have to go along. And I think that it was an intensely a harrowing sort of internal process that could not necessarily be measured by anything other than Greta's ongoing absence after death in the world. It was a personal apocalypse.

Greg Dalton: Have you been able to find joy afterwards and can other people find joy even in climate collapse?

Jayson Greene: I would never have written the book I wrote. I would never written any book at all if I had a story to tell that was rooted in or about despair. in the act of choosing to tell people about my daughter and what we went through was an act of sort of wanting to heal, wanting to be healed and be healed myself, you know, but I also know that presenting this is what people do with grief must be witnessed. And when it is witnessed it can be processed and I absolutely, I live through a harrowing dark time but have come out and I live in a joyful world. Part of the dissonance of knowing that the planet is in such dire shape is that I view it from a place of relative abundance and plenty

Greg Dalton: I've come to learn to enjoy beautiful days and sunny days. And yes, there can be beauty right here right now even though I know the climate collapse is happening and the sixth grade extinction is happening and all these things are happening. In some ways if we take this opportunity presented to us, we can embrace and enjoy the things that we might've otherwise taken for granted because we know that they’re fleeting or disappearing.

Jayson Greene: Yeah, I mean absolutely true. And I think that I had to face my anger and my despair in order to be able to process my grief having lost Greta, and to move on with my life. And I think in order to process and move on with my fear around the climate collapse, it's the same process. Can you name your fear? When I'm feeling overwhelmed by fear it is helpful to be reminded that I should probably name my fear. And by doing that I take it out of the realm of the unnamable into the nameable. And I think that that's a really powerful tactic for dealing and yes it also makes you help able to enjoy when you face your fears you let go of them for a moment and you get to enjoy the experience of your life again. This is what persistent fear and anxiety can do, they can rob you of your ability to enjoy sunny days. it speaks again to the insane abundance and prosperity through which I have lived that this feeling is so completely foreign and unfamiliar and that I am being forced to reckon with what millennia of humans have had to live with every day of their lives.

Greg Dalton: Right. And that naming is very powerful and oftentimes music gives voice to those things. How do you think climate will be representative music going forward as the climate crisis continues to hit people in more obvious and accelerating ways.

Jayson Greene: I have always felt and I do believe that music is not a great container for political statements. You can put them in but they leak out the minute you give them to somebody. You can't believe that they're going to receive the message that you loaded in there like a message in a bottle because music is so personal, it speaks to that person. You're not there with them when they're hearing it. You're not in the room with them and you can’t control their reaction or how they interpret it, right. So, I have always thought that it’s a leaky container for things like ethics or morals or political messages. But I think it's the most effective one we have for speaking to our feelings. And mourning and I mean what is music for if not for remembrance and mourning. It’s for celebration, remembrance and mourning. Those are the three things that we turn to music for. And I think that in some ways the music will respond to the climate crisis is the way it responds to all crises: in the language of personal loss in the language of defiant hope. Think about the way that music has you know worked in other times of great upheaval. Think about the way that music responds to the civil rights crisis, you know, the civil rights movement and decades of injustice. The music that spoke most powerfully say, Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come. That is a song of personal anguish. It's an anthem not because it was a song about wrong being done and action that needed to be taken, but it was one person’s impossibly massive sounding yearning for better times. And I think that's the same sort of way that musicians will respond to the climate crisis. It's with their humanity in some ways it’s the only way to be reminded of what it is that we stand to lose.

Greg Dalton: Jayson Greene is a music critic, editor and author of the memoir, Once More We Saw Stars. It’s a very touching tribute to your daughter, Greta. Thank you, Jayson for coming on Climate One and sharing your story.

Jayson Greene: Thank you so very much for inviting me.

Music: In

Ariana Brocious:On this Climate One... We’ve been talking about coping with the climate crisis through music. This episode was supported in part by the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

Ariana Brocious: Climate One’s empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To hear more, subscribe to our podcast on Apple or wherever you get your pods.Talking about climate can be hard-- but it’s critical to address the transitions we need to make in all parts of society. Please help us get people talking more about climate by giving us a rating or review if you are listening on Apple. You can do it right now on your device. You can also help by sending a link to this episode to a friend. By sharing you can help people have their own deeper climate conversations.

Ariana Brocious: Brad Marshland is our senior producer; our producers and audio editors are Austin Colón me, Ariana Brocious. Our team also includes Steve Fox and Sara-Katherine Coxon. Our theme music was composed by George Young (and arranged by Matt Willcox). Gloria Duffy is CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan forum where our program originates. Our host and executive producer Greg Dalton will be back next week. Thanks for listening.

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