Redefining Climate Change Denial
[Music]
while i was working on my phd
back in 2005 i had the opportunity to
pick up a guest speaker from the airport
dr steven schneider he was a lead author
on the most comprehensive report on
climate change to be written
up to that time so he gave me a little
bit of trouble for picking him up in a
single occupancy suv
i probably should have seen that one
coming i guess
and i knew he was right but i
rationalized it by telling myself
i’m just one person this is a big
systemic problem that we have to fix
but he gave a phenomenal talk it really
changed the arc of my career
up to that point i’d just been studying
earth sciences
and he convinced me that to solve
society’s most pressing problems
we have to be studying human and natural
systems as integrated parts of a whole
i’ve been working towards that ever
since
i remember the day about five years
later reading that he had abruptly
passed away
he had a pulmonary embolism on an
airplane
and i was devastated but i was also just
struck by the profound irony
that someone who dedicated his life to
climate activism
died doing one of the most fossil fuel
intensive activities any human can do
flying but that’s just how we all
thought at that point you had to fly for
research you had to fly for meetings you
had to fly for conferences
the more successful you were the more
flying you did
and it’s only recently as i’ve been
reflecting on my own career and the
amount of travel i’ve done as a
scientist
that i stopped and wondered have i been
living the life
of a climate change denier
you ever have a moment like that where
you’re just gobsmacked by this
realization that your behavior
and your beliefs are just not as well
aligned as you thought they were
well fast forward to 2015 president
obama was making climate a priority
the us was actively shaping the paris
agreement there were reasons for
by 2015 we had known everything we
needed to know
for decades and actually much longer
than that
the first paper to describe the global
warming problem was published in 1856
1856 by an american scientist
eunice foote she laid it all out all the
way back then
and certainly al gore updated and
reminded us
in gory detail in the mid 1990s
by 2015 we were swimming in oceans of
data
from meteorological stations all around
the world
we’d collected thousands of sediment
cores from lakes and ice cores from
glaciers
to allow us to reconstruct what past
climates have been like
and they were all telling us how far
outside of normal conditions we were
this is no natural cycle we’re way
outside of natural conditions
we had little gadgets we could use to
measure co2 coming out of individual
leaves on trees
as well as at the scale of entire cities
and whole continents
and all of this information was feeding
into some of the most sophisticated
computer models
ever created to help us predict what
future
climate scenarios look like
and yet despite this mountain of
information that was all pointing in the
same direction and screaming at us of
what a disaster we had created
in february of 2015 jim inhofe
brought a snowball onto the floor of the
u.s senate
as evidence that climate change was just
a hoax
he brought a snowball
this was his attempt to undermine a
century and a half of science
this was his response to the recent
observation that 2014
had been the hottest year on record well
guess what
2015 was even hotter as was 2016
in 2017 in 2018 and 2019
and 2020. they were all hotter
inhofe was the definition of a climate
change denier
at that time some called these people
skeptics i don’t think so
skeptics bring substantive arguments to
debate
inhofe and the other deniers responded
to all the overwhelming science
by just saying nah
and it worked it was enough to continue
to delay
action and we as a society
we just let that go we let that go
so let’s just briefly talk about our
current situation i’m sure
many of you know the story fossil fuels
continue to rise
this plot shows global energy
consumption from all these different
sources
over the past 200 years we’ve seen huge
increases in fossil fuels
coal oil and gas just since the year
2000
if you look around you see solar panels
going up and wind farms and you feel
like we’ve got this problem licked
i got to burst that bubble for you right
now
all global renewables are represented in
that thin
green band there renewables have not
offset fossil fuels in any way
shape or form they’ve only enabled
growth in energy consumption
i think it’s important to point out here
too that the vast majority of these
historical fossil fuel emissions were
put in the air by white people
mostly in europe and north america and
people of color
are impacted disproportionately by
climate change
all around the world so i don’t see how
we can look at this as anything other
than
a form of environmental racism whether
it was intentional
or not just what does a hotter future
look like
we’re already starting to see hints of
the severe implications to come
and we’re becoming a little bit
desensitized to it
more extreme weather more floods more
droughts
more wildfire more food and water
shortages
all of these cause political social and
economic instabilities
so we’re expecting tens to hundreds of
millions of climate refugees
by 2050.
human suffering ecosystems
failing instabilities that pose
threats to national security for which
we are precariously unprepared
according to the us military
we are in a climate emergency and i’m
using that word emergency very precisely
to mean a threat that requires immediate
action
to avoid catastrophic outcomes i know a
lot of you are probably thinking but
i’ve got five
other emergencies going on right now but
climate change is the big one because it
multiplies all of these other problems
mental health infectious disease poverty
they’re all multiplied they’re amplified
by climate change and so many of the
impacts of climate change
are irreversible
what happens from here is up to us every
bit of fossil carbon we put in the air
makes it worse and more expensive to
deal with
we’re out of wiggle room we’re out of
time for delays and half measures
the next five years are critical
we must start to dramatically reduce
fossil fuels
starting now
so this all begs the question what is a
climate change denier in the 2020s
we still have some of these bonehead
deniers that just overtly refuse to
accept facts there’s no
amount of information that’s going to
convince them
maybe it’s a defense mechanism for them
they can’t handle the truth
maybe they have a financial or political
stake in our current fossil fuel economy
all we know for sure is that they’re
wrong
and in denial of reality
most people choose to accept facts 60 to
70 percent of americans
understand climate change is happening
they’re concerned about it they believe
it will harm future generations
and they think we should be taking
action now
but even among these people these good
well-intentioned people
there are still so many passive forms of
climate change denial
take for example what i call the vip
denier
these are very important people anything
they do is so important
that the carbon pollution they produce
is justified in their opinion
this was me five years ago this is why i
thought it was okay to fly around the
world
and tell people about how bad climate
change was right
but here’s the thing we have a small
fixed and non-negotiable amount of
carbon we can put in the air
before we reach critical climate
thresholds
and the air doesn’t care who burns it
so if i burn a bunch of fossil fuels on
a flight across the country
for a two-day conference that’s fossil
fuels that someone in india can’t use
to feed their entire family for a full
year
a full year
we can all rationalize that what we do
is important
but when we have a fixed amount of
carbon we can put in the air
equity matters
there’s also the technologists denier
some of them will say i can burn as much
fossil fuels as i want the next
generation
is going to solve it number one we don’t
have that kind of time
number two that’s our kids that’s our
grandkids we’re talking about
haven’t we put enough on them already
wouldn’t we rather leave them with a
better world
rather than bigger problems to deal with
other technologists deniers will say
well there’s a big breakthrough right
around the corner it’s going to solve
all of this all these problems are just
going to go poof
yeah right anyone driving a
hydrogen-powered car
or have a carbon capture tower in your
backyard
no we’ve been talking about those
technologies
for decades and they’re still
impractical
there will be technological advances but
we are terrible
at predicting when they’re going to be
ready for use at scale
reducing emissions right now buys us
time
for those technologies to come to
fruition
there’s also the offset denier so they
think
i can burn as much fossil fuels as i
want now i’m just going to pay somebody
ten dollars to plant a tree
and hope it doesn’t burn down
now don’t get me wrong here planting
trees is great
but number one the carbon offset
accounting at the global scale
is pretty unreliable number two
more importantly we simply cannot offset
all the fossil carbon
we’re taking out of the ground by
putting trees on earth’s surface
we literally run out of viable tree
habitat pretty quickly
and third once we bring all that fossil
carbon up and put it on the surface we
have to manage it and we all know
that carbon can be locked up in a tree
one minute and go up in smoke
and be back in the air the next the only
way to keep the carbon out of the air
is to keep the fossil fuels in the
ground
so plant trees i love trees but don’t
use it as an excuse to burn a bunch more
fossil fuels
in many ways i feel like these offset
schemes are more effective at offsetting
guilt
than they are at offsetting anything to
do with our carbon
fossil fuel pollution
lastly we’ve got the helpless bystander
denier
totally accepts the science totally
can’t do anything about it
climate change is a problem that
somebody else needs to solve
in some ways this may be the worst form
of denial because it exudes inactivism
and inactivism is contagious
at this point in history if you’re just
standing around doing nothing on this
you are part of the problem
see in the 2020s it’s not just about
denying the science the much more common
problem now
is in denying that it’s an emergency
it’s about denying our own power to play
a real role in
actionable i can get it done today
solutions
so let me try to redefine what it is to
be a climate change denier in the 2020s
i think a climate change denier at this
point is anyone that has a large carbon
footprint
and is not working every day to reduce
fossil fuel use
if you’re wondering if you have a large
carbon footprint well if you drove here
today or you’re watching this on a
computer or you fly a couple times a
year you definitely have a large carbon
footprint
welcome to the club
now you can’t solve it all yourself we
have a massive global system that needs
to be fixed
but we have to work on it together
and we must work on it every day
so let’s finish up by talking about what
it means to work on it
every day so many things you can do
cost nothing vote for science
vote for clean energy vote for an
economy in which everyone pays
for what they get another thing we can
just do is just talk about it
we need to normalize talking about
climate change
talk about our concerns talk about
solutions speak up to those spreading
misinformation
you know we can only vote every couple
years an election rolls around but we
can call our representatives
every day and sometimes i do
especially the local ones that are most
likely to listen
a third thing we can do is just don’t
buy
so much stuff
right think of how much money i just
saved you
when we’re embedded in a fossil fuel
intensive
system buying less stuff saves a lot of
fossil fuel pollution
and when you have to buy stuff buy from
truly sustainable companies
don’t fall for the false promises and
half measures
if a company says they’re getting rid of
plastic bags that’s great give them a
high five
should have done it 20 years ago keep
going
you’ve only solved about one percent of
the problem
right we need the whole system to be
fossil fuel
free i’m not going to go through the
laundry list of things we can each do to
eliminate fossil fuels there are lots of
other great
ted talks and other resources out there
about climate action
this is a talk about recognizing the
passive forms
of climate change denial i’m not here to
shame you
i’m here to motivate you to become part
of the solution
every day there’s an active role
for everyone to play whether you’re a
chef or a server
a janitor a teacher a business owner a
healthcare worker
a truck driver an artist whether you’re
unemployed or retired there’s a role for
you
whatever your talents your capacities
your means there’s a role for you to
play
find it ask yourself how can i apply my
talents my power
what can i bring to bear to help solve
this problem and start today
as a climate realist
stephen schneider taught us that we had
to fix the system
and fixing the system starts with me and
you
thank you
you