How to talk to a climate change sceptic

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Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and author: When it comes to how we feel about climate change, we often tend to separate people into two groups: believers and deniers. But I don't like those labels.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: We need to talk about climate change. But what if the person you’re talking to doesn’t ‘believe’. On this episode, we hear from someone reframing this massively important discussion.

Katharine Hayhoe: Climate change is not a religion. It doesn't care whether you believe it or not. The planet is warming due to human emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Robin Pomeroy: Climate scientist and author Katharine Hayhoe tells us why we are often wrong when we label people as climate change deniers. And once we realise that, we can all change the way we talk about it

Katharine Hayhoe: The word denier is often applied to people who have questions, who aren't sure, who have heard things from people they trust, and they're not sure who to believe.

Robin Pomeroy: Katharine Hayhoe explains why so many othereise reasonable people still prefer to reject conclusive scientific evidence.

Katharine Hayhoe: People who are doubtful are doubtful because they've heard that solutions are going to be bad, they've heard that solutions pose a threat to their identity, to their well-being, to their ideology.

Robin Pomeroy: And she gives tips to help us start those perhaps uncomfortable conversations.

Katharine Hayhoe: Begin with something you have in common, not something that divides you.

Robin Pomeroy: Katherine Hayhoe believes only around 10% of people will never be persuaded on climate change - and conversations with them will be rather different.

Katharine Hayhoe: My best advice is to say, I'm sorry, you're wrong, and let's talk about something else.

Robin Pomeroy: Subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts, or visit wef.ch/podcasts.

I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look at why - and how - we need to talk about climate change…

Katharine Hayhoe: That is the recipe for a positive conversation on climate change.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos

Katherine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and an encouragingly optimistic voice on what is often a doom-laden subject.

She is also an evangelical Christian and co-author with her pastor husband of a book called A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. Her latest book is called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.

If, like me, you have found yourself in conversation with someone - friend, family member, someone you just met - and climate change comes up, and you fear you are talking to a climate denier -- it’s worth listening to this episode -- because you might be wrong. And even if you are right - Katherine also has a useful tip for dealing with that.

My colleague Anna-Bruce Lockhart spoke to Katherine Hayhoe, and started by asking her if the increase in extreme weather events around the world was likely to help humans reach a broad consensus on the reality and causes of climate change.

Katharine Hayhoe: People often call climate change global warming, but I call it global weirding. Why? Because we're everywhere we live. The weather is getting weirder. Climate change is loading our weather dice against us.

Wherever we live, it's as if we have a pair of natural weather dice and we always have a chance of rolling a double six naturally: a storm, a heat wave, a drought, a flood. But as the world warms decade by decade, it's like it's sneaking in and taking one of those numbers from our dice and turning it into another six and then another one and then a seven or an eight.

And we say, How could this be happening? How could we be having three 500-year flood events in three years? How could we be seeing wildfire events so extreme that half a continent is blanketed in orange smoke? How do we see not one or two, but eight record breaking floods around the world in the same week? That's global weirding.

As a climate scientist, I believe that we are reaching a tipping point. And that tipping point is not a change in the physical climate system. It's a change in public opinion.

No matter who you are, no matter where you live around the world, no matter what you care about, today chances are you or someone you know has already been affected by a changing climate. You have already been impacted by how climate change is supersizing many of our weather and climate extremes.

The psychological distance that kept us from realising that climate change is now and it's here is falling.

But at the same time as these disasters overtake our world, more and more of us are wondering, what can I do? How can I make a difference? And we can make a difference by using our voice to advocate for change wherever we are. Our voice is the most powerful force we have. That is how the world has changed before, and that is how the world can change again.

Around the world, more people are worried about climate change than ever before. More people want action on climate change than ever before. And more people are asking me as a climate scientist than ever before, what can I do?

And my answer is this. You can talk about it. Not talking about the polar bears or the ice sheets, but talk about what is happening where you live, to the people, the places, the things you love, and talk about what real solutions look like.

Solutions that your business, your school, your place of work, your neighbourhood, your city, your organisation, your group of friends, your family. Solutions that you could implement together. Because that is how change happens. It happens when someone uses their voice to catalyse that change by saying, Here is the risk that we confront today. Here is what the future could look like if we did something about it. And here is the path to get there. From A to B.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart, World Economic Forum: There is a lot of climate doomerism around at the moment, so obviously it's getting quite bad and quite alarming. So people are becoming quite fatalistic. What strategies might you suggest when it comes to having a conversation with somebody who is in that state of mind for getting them to focus on a slightly more constructive path?

Katharine Hayhoe: When I ask people how they feel about climate change in one word, no matter who I'm speaking to, no matter where they're from, the words I hear are: sad, anxious, depressed, hopeless, frustrated, angry.

Around the world, record numbers of people are worried about climate change. Eco-anxiety is on the rise. And if you feel that way, you're not alone.

Many people feel that way and have a rational reason to do so, because, as a climate scientist, I know that we are conducting an unprecedented experiment with the only home we have. We have never seen this much carbon going into the atmosphere this quickly as far back as we can go in the history of this planet.

And we have never seen temperatures increasing this rapidly over the course of human civilisation on this planet.

If you are worried, you have every reason to be worried. That is a completely rational response to what we see happening. But we can't stop there because we could all be worried, every single one of us around the world. But if we don't know what to do about this problem, we'll do nothing.

So let's turn that worry into action. Let's recognise that it's bad and it's getting worse. But a better future is possible and the definition of hope is not positive thinking. It's recognising that there is a path from where we are today.

Because why do you need hope if everything's fine? You need hope when things are not going well. And that's exactly where we are today. But there is a path from where we are today to where we could be tomorrow if we tackle this together.

That is the definition of rational hope. And together I truly believe that we can do this.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart: Can you give an example of how in a tangible way does hope help us get to get somewhere good?

Katharine Hayhoe: As human beings, we are wired to move forward towards something rather than away from it.

And when the headlines are flooded with the very real risks and disasters that are happening as a result of climate change, when the headlines are full of the inaction or the inadequate actions that are being taken, that makes us very aware of the risks that we need to we must avoid.

But we also need to know what are we moving towards? What does that better future look like If we can wean ourselves off fossil fuels, if we can use our energy and our food efficiently, if we can transition to clean energy, how blue would those skies be? How safe would our cities be? How would our health improve? How would the quality of our life improve? How abundant would nature become?

We need that vision of a better future. That is what our hope is based on. Hope recognises. It's bad. Hope says there is something better. There is a path to get there. And here's what you can do to make a difference.

How does a system change? It changes when individuals within that system call for, advocate and catalyse that change. And what we have seen the last few years is no one is too small or too young or too old to use their voice to call for that change.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart: So this message that you have for the world, which is that we can all do our bit to save the planet by going out and talking to people, how did you come to this points of view in the first place?

Katharine Hayhoe: As a climate scientist, I study what's happening to our world and what will happen depending on the choices we make.

So I look at the difference between a future where we continue to depend on fossil fuels. We continue to produce carbon emissions and other heat trapping gases. And I compare that to a future where we do address our emissions. We do wean ourselves off fossil fuels, we do take climate action. And I show the risks that we can avoid through action today.

But when I started to talk to people about climate risks, they would ask me the obvious question, which is, well, what am I supposed to do about it? And I, as a climate scientist, thought, Well, that's not what I do. I tell people the problem. I'm not the diagnosing physician. I don't fix it.

But we all have to be part of fixing it. So I thought, all right, I will learn about replacing our light bulbs, about changing our diet, about changing the ways that we travel and we live.

But then I realised, and I calculated because I'm a scientist, so I look at the data, I realised and I calculated that even if all of us who are worried about climate change did everything within our power to reduce our personal emissions, our carbon footprint, as it's called, that would only address a fraction of the problem.

We need to change the system so that the easiest and most affordable choice for everyone is also the best choice for people on the planet.

And how do we do that? Well, according to the Yale Program on Climate Communication, who examined public opinion on climate not just around the United States or across North America, but around the world, most people are worried about climate change.

But then when they asked people, Do you ever talk about it? Even once in a while? The answer is overwhelmingly, no.

And I realised, what is communication other than the catalyst for humans working together? How do humans ever do anything together if we don't communicate first? But that is such an obvious step that we just jumped right over it. We don't even consider that consciously as climate action.

So what I want you to do is I want you to consider the first domino in that long chain of dominoes or actions that can lead us to a better future is communication. It is talking about why this matters, what we or I or us or all of us together, what we could do to make a difference. Where we live, where we work, where we study, where we worship.

How could we work together towards that better future? That is the first step in that long path that I truly believe will take us there, but only if we do it together.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart: So in your book Saving Us you advocate for always seeking common ground with those who don't hold the same opinions as you. And I personally know a lot of people who see the effects of climate change, but they don't believe that it's manmade. Throw all the data at them that you like, but they are holding on to their beliefs for emotional or political reasons. So do you have any tricks up your sleeve that you can share for connecting to people like that and inspiring them?

Katharine Hayhoe: When it comes to how we feel about climate change, we often tend to separate people into two groups, believers and deniers. But I don't like those labels.

First of all, climate change is not a religion. It doesn't care whether you believe it or not. The planet is warming due to human emissions of heat-trapping gases.

And second of all, the word denier is often applied to people who have questions, who aren't sure, who have heard things from people they trust, and they're not sure who to believe.

So rather than just two categories, I prefer what's called the six categories that the Yale Program on Climate Communication has developed.

And at one end we have people who are alarmed and people who are concerned. And today those two groups together make up the majority of the population: alarmed and concerned.

But then you have people who are cautious. And people who are cautious often lead with their doubts. So sometimes they're mistaken for deniers because they ask, how do we know it's real? How do we know it's not volcanic eruptions? I heard that actually more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is better, not worse for plants. They lead with their questions and we need to have good answers to those questions.

There's a small group of people who are disengaged. That group is getting smaller and smaller by the day.

Then there's people who are doubtful. Why? Not because they truly have a problem with the science. Anyone who really has a problem with the science explains how digging up and burning coal and gas and oil produces heat trapping gases that are building up in the atmosphere, wrapping an extra blanket of carbon pollution around the planet. It's the same science that explains how stoves and refrigerators and even aeroplanes work. And you don't see a lot of people rejecting them, do you?

So people who are doubtful are doubtful because they've heard that solutions are going to be bad, they've heard that solutions pose a threat to their identity, to their well-being, to their ideology.

But if I say there's a problem and I don't want to fix it, that wouldn't make me a very good person. So instead we come up with excuses or reasons or plausible deniability. I heard that that volcano just erupted. I heard that it's just solar cycles or a natural cycle or I heard that it's really not so bad, in fact, warmer is better, isn't it? That's where people come from if they're doubtful.

Now, the very end of the spectrum, we have people who are dismissive. And I do like that label because I think it's very accurate. People who are dismissive, which in the United States represent about 10% of the population, and there are dismissive people in other countries around the world. I'm Canadian. We have a dismissive contingent there. There is absolutely dismissive people in Europe, in Australia, in the UK. I hear from them all the time in social media.

But despite their loud voices, they are only a tiny fraction of the population, 10% in the US, less in other countries.

And people who are dismissive will dismiss everything. They will dismiss what 2,000 scientists have to say. They'll dismiss what 2 million scientific studies have to say. They will dismiss anything and everything that they think may pose a threat to their identity and their ideology.

So if someone is dismissive, if they are somebody who is always posting on social media - every single day something about how climate change is a hoax, or every conversation, somehow they bring up the idea that it isn't real, or scientists are just making it up. Or the World Economic Forum is creating it as a hoax as part of their globalist agenda - if that's that type of person, my best advice is to say, I'm sorry, you're wrong, and let's talk about something else.

And if they're your relative, I would go ahead and say as I would, I love you. I'm sorry you're wrong. Now let's talk about something else.

But here's the good news. 90% of people are not dismissive. And there we absolutely can have positive, constructive conversations if we follow this simple plan.

Number one. Begin with something you have in common, not something that divides you. And if you don't know what you have in common, ask them questions and listen to their answers until you find something.

Maybe you're both parents. Maybe you both are pet owners. Maybe you both enjoy cooking. I've started conversations over the fact that we both enjoy knitting or we both enjoy visiting the same places.

Start a conversation with something you have in common with. Connect the dots to how climate change is affecting whatever it is they care about. Tennis, golf, football. The places where we live, the people we love. Climate change is affecting almost every aspect of our lives. It's not hard to connect those dots.

But then don't stop there. Bring in positive, constructive solutions. Did you know what this city is doing? Did you know what this company is doing? Did you know what this school is doing? Do you know what I'm doing in my personal life that I'm really excited about?

Bond over shared values, connect the dots to climate change and inspire by providing positive, actionable ideas of ways that we together truly can make a difference.

That is the recipe for a positive conversation on climate change that activates and catalyses change.

Anna Bruce-Lockhart: So just say you're with your climate dismissive or denial or cautious or doubtful or disengaged, and they come around to your way of thinking. They say, okay, okay, okay, I get it, I get it. All right. I'm prepared to agree. But okay, so what do we do now? And so what direction would you point them into.

Katharine Hayhoe: As an individual, the most important thing that we can do to tackle climate change is, in the words of Bill McKibben, not be such an individual. What does that mean? We need system change. But what is a system made up of other than individuals? And how does a system change other than when individuals call for that change?

So according to the social science, the number one thing that you can do to catalyse climate action is to talk about why it matters and what solutions look like wherever you live and work and whoever you're around.

Step number two: join a group to amplify your voice. I'm part of an organisation of mothers who care about climate action. I'm part of an organisation of Christians who care about climate action. I enjoy skiing and so I support an organisation of winter athletes who care about climate change.

Find your tribe, find your group, find your organisation and help to amplify the call for change.

You can also speak with your money. Where do you bank? What credit card do you use? Where's your retirement invested?

You can use your voice to speak out to politicians to vote and to call for action. You can use your voice to call for action where you work, where you study.

And you can absolutely make changes in your personal life to how you live, how you eat, how you travel. But do not stop there. Talk about it. Share that information to make it truly contagious. That is how individuals have changed our society before, and that is how we must change it again.

When it comes to climate solutions, there is no one solution that will fix it all. But there are a plethora of small solutions that added together truly can tackle this problem at scale.

And those solutions fall into three categories. To explain them, I use a swimming pool. So the swimming pool is a metaphor for the atmosphere. Before the Industrial Revolution, we had just the right amount of heat trapping gases in the atmosphere to keep us at the perfect temperature for life. That's as if you had just the right amount of water in the swimming pool so that your toes could just touch the bottom. But at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we stuck a giant hose in the swimming pool and we've been turning that hose up every year.

During the first year of the pandemic, we turned it down 7% and then we turned it right back up again. So the water in the pool is rising faster and faster. What's the first thing we have to do? We have to turn off the hose.

How do we turn off the hose? Often you might think, well, that's clean energy. And of course it is. But the most affordable type of energy is the energy we don't use. Efficiency, reducing waste, in our energy, in our food, that helps reduce the amount of water coming out of the hose.

Transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy, that absolutely cuts and can eventually eliminate, the water coming out of the hose.

Also addressing emissions from deforestation, from agriculture, the behavioural changes that we need to change the amount of energy we need in the first place. All of those are ways to turn off the hose.

But this pool has a drain, and that drain is nature. It's a way to take carbon out of the atmosphere where we have too much of it, and put it back into soils and ecosystems where we want it.

Now most people would say, Oh yes, that's planting trees. And planting trees is definitely one way to make the drain bigger.

But the first way to make it bigger is to protect the nature we already have.

The second way is to restore the nature that we have degraded.

The third way is to regenerate the nature which is planting trees, restoring coastal wetlands, restoring grasslands.

Climate smart agriculture offers the opportunity through regenerative agricultural practices to put carbon back into agricultural soils where it can be a fertiliser for crops.

And then in this category of making the drain bigger, we also have technology like direct air capture that can set carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into a product that prevents its release.

None of these represents the solution to climate change, but together they have enormous potential.

Nature has the ability to take up to a third of our carbon emissions out of the atmosphere within this decade if we let her.

There's one more thing we need to do, though. The level of water in the pool is now so high that our toes don't touch the ground. We need to learn how to swim. That is adaptation and resilience.

We live in a world with 8 billion people and tens of trillions of dollars in infrastructure that was all built for a planet that doesn't exist anymore.

Our conditions on this planet, our climate is changing faster than any time in human history. And we need to build resilience into our infrastructure, our water systems, our food systems, our supply chains, our economic systems, and most of all, our most vulnerable communities.

Climate change affects all of us, no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter what you care about. But it doesn't affect us all equally. Those who are already marginalised, who are already vulnerable, who already don't have a safe place to live, don't have clean water to drink, don't have enough food to feed their children, don't have access to basic health care, basic education. They are the ones who are most impacted by climate change.

We need to turn off that hose. We need to make the drain bigger and we need to learn how to swim and teach others how to swim. How much? As much as possible. As soon as possible.

The science says that every bit of warming matters. Every action matters. Every choice matters. And what that means to me as a scientist is that we have the ability to right our future.

That ability begins now. For thousands of years, we humans have been living as if we were on a flat, infinite planet. What do I mean by that? We have lived as if if we ran out of anything, we could always go get more over there. And all of the waste and pollution we produce could just go far away.

But the reality is, we do not live on a flat, infinite planet. We live on a round planet. And today we inhabit that round planet with 8 billion other people. It is past time to recognise that what goes in comes out and has to go right back in again.

If we are not able to build a truly sustainable circular economy, we are the ones, our civilisation, is what will not survive.

The planet doesn't need us. We need the planet. Nature doesn't need us. We need nature. If we are not able to figure out how to be sustainable - in the sense that sustainable just means can we continue? - our civilisation is what's at risk.

So it's not a case of people or the planet, the environment or the economy. It's the question of all of us together or not at all.

Robin Pomeroy: Katherine Hayhoe was talking to Anna-Bruce Lockhart. Her book is called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.

We have several episodes of Radio Davos on climate change, the energy transition and biodiversity - find them on your podcast app or at wef.ch/podcasts, where you’ll also find our other podcasts, Meet the Leader, Agenda Dialogues and the World Economic Forum Book Club Podcast.

This episode of Radio Davos was presented by me, Robin Pomeroy. Editing was by Jere Johansson. Studio production was by Gareth Nolan.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.