(Dis)trusting Climate Science, with Laur Hesse Fisher

Dave: 

Hello and welcome to Your Brain on Climate, my name is Dave. It occurred to me the other day that for someone like me, I have spent 20 years banging on about climate science.

I've never read a bit of climate science. Like, I understand the metaphors that are invoked and the story that is given, and I tell those stories back that we are putting too much stuff into the atmosphere and that is warming it up and etc etc. But I don't actually really understand that and I take it all, if I'm honest, in the same way as I do with quantum physics or with why vaccines are good, I take it all on faith. I trust a combination of stuff. I trust the scientific process. I trust the people that are telling me about that scientific process.

And I trust the sheer weight of evidence and the sheer amount of people that have been involved with it. And people like me say it's good, so therefore I trust it. But...

A lot of people don't. A lot of people don't trust it. And it's one of the most perennial things that I hear in my work in climate communication and campaigning, is you'll often hear people just banging on at other people saying, here are the facts, you should listen to the facts, and getting very frustrated when they don't. Now that can be a problem at the day -to -day level and the conversations that we have, and it can annoy us around the Christmas dinner table when we're talking to a family member who thinks climate science is all made up, right? But it's also a bigger problem than that, because climate science is sort of demonised by huge tracts of people who don't want climate action to happen. The science is unreliable, you can't trust the process, all of this stuff sort of happens. There are a load of people, some very influential people, some orange coloured people who may or may not be getting to the White House again, for example, who will quite happily trash the science, and some people who very heavily believe it.

And if you think about it for a second, why should we trust climate science? Like, I take it all on faith, as far as I know it's all made up. Are people really so bad if they don't trust it? And what does all of that mean for climate communications and how we go about it?

So in this episode of Your Brain on Climate, I'm talking to someone who is an expert in this stuff. I'm talking to Laur Hesse Fisher from the States. She is the host of a thing called TIL Climate. Today I learned climate. She works for MIT and this is what she does. She talks about climate change and also about political identity and public identity and how it is that some people think the science is real, some people don't think the science is real, why that's happening and what we can do about it. How can we connect people better to climate change? And we talk about climate science and good storytelling and how to connect people with what's going on, a lot of which isn't talking about the science at all, spoiler. But also we get into America and we get into why America is particularly polarised on this stuff. And surprise, surprise, it's again not to do with the science at all and it goes right down to sort of foundational stories about ourselves, about who we trust, the land that we live in and what we want our world to be like.

As always if you hear this noise it denotes wisdom, it means someone, probably Laur, has said something of interest and you can have a look in the show notes when you're done, you don't need to stop the show and pause the flow. And as always, thank you so much to everyone who sponsors me on Patreon. Or not on Patreon, you can sponsor a Patreon at patreon .com slash your brain on climate, or you can email me at hello at your brain on climate if you want to do a one off donation. Like my friend Nina did, Nina, I can't thank you enough for your generous support for the show. That allows me to pay my guests, including Laur, which I think is a cornerstone of doing this stuff in a fair and decent way. And as always, pop onto your podcast medium of choice and please give me a review if you like this. Some reviews are coming in. It is nice. It makes me feel good. It pushes me up the charts. Means more interviews. Means happy Dave. Means we all save the planet. Yes? Good. On with it.

Dave: 

Give me your best two minute explanation of what climate change is, assuming, and this is not a million miles away from the truth, that I am an absolute cretin. So, off you go. What is climate change? Go. 

Laur: Well, so actually, my first question back to you was for who? 

Dave: Oh, here we go. 

Laur: So I'm kind of, I'm messing you up a little bit. I'm messing you up a little bit here, but seriously, the question of who is very important and it's the critical conversation here. Cause I mean, I'm not being cheeky, I'm being genuine. You know, if you're interested in climate change science, I'll say something that's totally different than if you're cautious or don't really care. And in general, there's this conversation that there is this way to talk about climate change. Well, guess what? There isn't, right? You know, some words and some approaches will work well for some people and some not so well for others. There is research on what terminology to use and what not to use on climate change. And I mean, I find that interesting and helpful. Like recently, I was reading research on how people react to the term climate crisis and aligned with some of our existing intuitions that we have about that. But it's also very limiting. Like there's just one right way to do it, but there isn't. But so what I would do in your situation, in your prompt, which I kind of messed up your experiment there, but, is try to ask questions. You know, what are you interested in? Why do you want to know? Why do you care? What kinds of concerns? What have you heard? What questions do you have? And then I try to respond to those questions and their inquiry. 

Dave: All right. Okay. Let's, right. I'm up for that. Let's play the game. Also, I keep getting people on here and when I ask them questions and they refuse to say it's simple, which is annoying, but we're going to, that's fine. We can, we can work with that. All right. Let's take a couple of examples then. So firstly, I would like you to explain it for a five year old. There we are.

Laur: 

Okay, great. It's actually very helpful because I have a five -year -old. Good. All right. So things that humans are doing, like driving the kinds of cars that we drive and making energy the way that we make energy right now, is creating a kind of pollution. And that pollution is acting like a blanket around our earth. And it's warming the planet more than humans have really ever experienced before. And it's starting to change our planet in new and different way that we either have to try and slow down and prevent or change to and adapt to. And some of those things might be, you know, where we build or what kind of, what kind of roads and where we build those roads and where people live. But then also at the same time, we want to take back this pollution, you know, stop putting it out into our world. So, if we change the way that we generate energy and electricity and what kind of cars we drive and things like that, that can do a lot to reduce that pollution.

Dave: 

That was only 59 seconds as well in under the hour. 

Laur: Well, you know, five year olds don't have a very long attention span. 

Dave: No, fair enough. You've done well if you get a minute out of it. It's interesting that in the five year old version, you didn't kind of do any of the like, why is it bad, but is that like on purpose? You just sort of said like, it's warming the planet and all this stuff is causing it. 

Laur: Yeah. And it's changing the way that humans experience our planet. And you know, it's changing, you have to change some of the decisions that we have, that we have to make. I mean, There is a reality, of course, that we're dealing with, how it's negatively impacting us. I don't know that a five -year -old needs to hear about that at this moment. I think the main thing is that it's causing a lot of, we need to make a lot of changes because of what's happened in the past. And these are, and it's like trying to make it very tangible, right? Like things like how we generate electricity and how we drive our cars and things. That's stuff that they can visualize and they can see as opposed to abstract concepts. Well, that metaphor of the blanket around the earth.

Dave: 

That was a, funny enough, I was watching back Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth or a bit of it from, wow, what is that now? 15 plus years ago? And he used that metaphor. That was a, it seems like an enduring way of talking about it, that there's this blanket going around stuff. 

Laur: 

Yeah. It's actually a great metaphor. We can all relate to it, which is why it's so powerful. We've all been under a blanket and experienced being worn by it, but also having too many blankets and feeling hot and needing to stick out your leg or throw them off or something like that. But of course, if we get to a place where we can't throw off the blankets, well then we're running into a bit of a problem and that's what we're dealing with with climate. 

Dave: Have you tried that line or one like it on your five -year -old and how does it tend to go down? 

Laur: 

Yeah, we haven't talked about climate change in particular. We've talked about pollution a lot. So, you know, exhaust from cars and things like that. littering and those kinds of pieces, but I haven't had the big conceptual conversation about climate change yet. We will talk about it. And the thing that's important is to talk about some things that have happened in the past with the knowledge that people had, right? I mean, we've had incredible progress with fossil fuels, right? I mean, we've been able to create a quality of living that just didn't exist before fossil fuels. We've all benefited and we still benefit today, but… We've learned that there are these consequences that fossil fuels bring. And now we need to respond to that with the knowledge that we have. Unfortunately, there have been bad actors over the years and things happening politically that's caused us to delay or not take action as fast as we need to. But we are where we are right now. And what can we do about that? And then giving very specific actionable things about what we've done in our lives, as well as what we've done as community members and as voters. and as professionals. And so giving people that sense of context, but then what we can do going forward, it's actually one of the areas that I think scientists and environmentalists have not done a very good job at. You hear a lot of doom and gloom, but you don't hear a lot of, okay, here are the solutions, here's what we can do, here are the successes that we've had that we can build upon. And that for the general public is what gets them engaged, right? You start tuning out when things get too depressing.

Dave: 

Alright, okay, so we're going to come back to that, but I want now to imagine that you are explaining climate science in two minutes or less, fewer, less, with someone who thinks that climate change is a plot to enslave us to the communist menace and doesn't trust you. and doesn't trust climate scientists. What are you going to do with that? You're going to even bother? 

Laur: 

There are two things. One is I ask them who they trust. What do they read? And if there are organizations or people that I think they trust that talk about climate change in alignment with the scientific consensus and everything else, then I would direct them towards that. I don't think I'm the best messenger for that person because they're probably not going to take me seriously because I've drank the Kool -Aid or whatever. People who -

Dave: That's an interesting point though. Are you kind of suggesting that like, there's, if you are a climaty sort of minded person and you've got an angry person who hates climaty type people, it's probably best just not to bother trying to engage with them. 

Laur: 

Well, it depends. It depends on your relationship with them and it depends if they're actually interested in engaging with you. or if they're just trying to tell you how wrong you are. If there's actually an opening for listening, like they actually have some inquiry, like, you know, they're saying, you know, Dave, I've heard all of this, but you know, what do you think? Well, then absolutely there's an opportunity to engage. But if I'm coming to you and I'm like, ah, this whole thing, like you've been brainwashed, it's not actually like this, you know, it's just a way to get more microchips under people's skin so they, the lizard people can come get you.

Well, there isn't an opening for conversation there. So what are you actually trying to accomplish in that conversation? Do you think that you're going to be able to accomplish it? 

Dave: 

It's pretty bad for you as well more than anything else. There's an awful lot of emotional energy can be expended trying to scream at people who won't be screamed at. 

Laur: 

I mean, who likes being screamed at, first of all? You know, there's a lot of articles that come out. I mean, I'm in all the climate news stuff and… Like I read a lot of it, I get exposed to a lot of it. And there's a lot of conversation around, you know, American Thanksgiving time or times of the holidays when people are getting together like, how do you talk to your uncle about climate change? It's actually kind of funny because I have an uncle that I've talked to about climate change and we see things differently. And I've learned things from him and hopefully he's learned things from me too. But the real thing is like, do you think that the Thanksgiving table around family is really the best opportunity and time to have a real conversation about something that people politically disagree with each other about. Probably not, right? And to think that you can really even change somebody's mind dramatically in one conversation is unlikely. So likely, what's much more likely is going out to lunch, the two of you going to get coffee, taking a walk around the block, whatever. and starting to engage in a dialogue, well, what do you think about this? What have you heard? What do you think about it? What have you heard? Well, here's what I've read. Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know. Here's what questions I have. That's much more likely to produce a fruitful conversation than trying to lecture somebody about the truth.

Dave: 

throwing potatoes at people and saying you're a bastard, probably didn't get anyone anywhere, did it? So there's a couple of things going on in there. Let's take them in turn. The first one is about facts. And I have been doing this sort of thing for long enough to be quite surprised when people still think facts work. Like the idea that all you need to do, if you hold an opinion that you can point to some facts about, is to show those facts to someone else. and they will agree with you, right? And that demonstrably doesn't work, because if it did work, we would have sorted anything where there was a factor back it up quite a long time ago. But why do you think that doesn't work? Why is it that the science of climate change, or for that matter, vaccine safety or insert other thing here, isn't enough to motivate people? 

Laur: 

Yeah. Well, so a big thing that's going on here is explained well by this concept of psychological distance. And this is something that Professor Elke Weber came together with in 2006.

And so this term refers to how far climate change, especially climate change impacts appear to be based on four things. So one is geography, time, social distance, or how certain the risk is. Okay, so like, for example, take wildfires, you know, geography, these wildfires are not near me. Time, these things will happen far in the future. Social distance, you know, this isn't happening to people like me or I'll be okay. Or it might not actually happen. The risk is uncertain. And so those things about climate change in particular, basically it's that it's not relevant to people. And we can work to close the psychological distance. Unfortunately, some recent events like unprecedented wildfires and heat waves and things like that have actually helped close the psychological distance. But the most important thing is to make it relevant. So. Katherine Hayhoe is a celebrated climate communicator and a climate scientist in the States. She has this really great project that I've always thought was very compelling, basically she worked with inside of communities where they had recent devastating events in people's lifetimes, like in the last 20 years. So people in that community remembered it. And then she talked about climate impacts relative to experiences that they've already had as a community about the flooding that that community had. So you remember that flood 20 years ago? Well, guess what? That's not going to happen every 100 years anymore. That's going to happen every 10 years or something like that. And that makes it much more relevant for people. That's just one example. There are many examples. But once again, this was a year dominated by rain. For our communities near waterways, that meant flooding. What we're seeing increasingly now is flooding happening very fast, very quickly. It's not taking huge amounts of rainfall to push these rivers up to levels, which would have been very, very unusual 10 years ago. It also caused a headache. So let's talk about, OK, yeah, guess what? You know that new house that you just bought or that flat you just invested in? Well, you know, you don't have flood insurance. And so if, you know, this flood happens in the way that we're talking about right now, guess what? That's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. in the next, and so this, you know, this investment that you just made, you're trying to pass it down to your kids, it might not be there. 

Or, you know, I'm kind of spitballing here a little bit, but that's the way you start trying to make it even more relevant to people. So let me give you another example. So I run a journalism fellowship at MIT, and it's a climate journalism fellowship. And we're… To my knowledge, we're the only journalism fellowship that's focused exclusively on local newsrooms and telling climate change in local newsrooms. So what we do is we bring a set of journalists from across the United States, particularly in areas of the country where there is low salience for climate change, meaning it's not being reported on or they're still… Like not a strong belief that it's happening or that humans are causing it or something related to that. Not a support for climate solutions. And we support those journalists in actually writing stories that connect local challenges and concerns to climate change. So, you know, one example was one of our fellows, he was writing from Louisiana, the biggest newspaper in Louisiana. And there was as you can imagine and still is, a very strong offshore oil industry there. And a lot of companies that support the offshore oil industry. Well, guess what? There are some companies that are transitioning to supporting offshore oil and looking at, well, how could we support offshore wind development? What does that mean to the local economy? What does that mean to local businesses? What does that mean to local policymakers? And so he was showing and telling the stories of, very astute, very keen, very shrewd business people in Louisiana who are starting to make this transition. Now that's really relevant to a lot of Louisianans who have deep history in the oil industry, have a big stake in a local economy and are trying to imagine, well, what is this clean energy transition, quote unquote, mean for me and mean for my community? It's very different than these kind of general statements about greening the grid or decarbonization.

Dave: 

Is there something about, humans didn't kind of evolve to be motivated by statistics about stuff, right? Like, there's always something about, there's something not inherently scary about a graph, I don't think. We have to put meaning onto that graph and we have to make it a thing that sort of moves us. And so why, yeah, how can we use scientific facts in good ways rather than bad ways. What can we do to those facts to bring them to life? 

Laur: 

Yeah. I mean, I really like this concept of psychological distance. I keep bringing it up because it's very helpful looking at, as you just said, there's a, you look at a graph and you feel distance from it, right? It doesn't quite make sense to you. It doesn't connote anything. Stories are a really powerful way for people to connect. It's a way to make something feel relevant and feel engaging. And so, through the journalism fellowship that we engage in, that is completely the way, the method and the mode that we use to connect with people. It's really about how you get, actually, let me tell you a big chunk of it, it's about highlighting local messengers. 

So there are some people, Dave, that you trust, and there are some people that you don't trust, and there are some people that you feel are like you and think like you, and there're people that you don't think are like you or feel like you. And that really changes who you listen to. and how you absorb information. So, if you are reading an article and it's about a neighbor of yours, maybe even that you know, or someone that you know that you respect, maybe a politician that you know and respect, and they're talking about something and they're talking about it very seriously, that's gonna completely change the way that you think about what's actually going on here. So yes, graphs, stories, all those kinds of things, but a really big component to climate change communication, 

And communication in general is who are the messengers? Who are the people telling these kinds of stories? Who are the people who are communicating this information? And are they trusted with the audiences that you're trying to reach? It's a big part of the equation here. 

Dave: 

So that leads onto the second thing I wanted to talk about. And you were talking about talking to your uncle in a safe sort of way and not throwing potatoes at him at Thanksgiving and stuff. And it makes me think that there are different ways to have a conversation. It's quite rare in most of our lives, unless we are politicians, that we stand up and give a speech about climate change, or indeed about vaccines or anything. Normally it's a bit more subtle than that, isn't it? And is there something that we, as people trying to talk about climate change, have to do in making the other person feel safe and feeling like they're not going to have potatoes thrown at them? And is that a large part, do you think, of building trust?

Laur: 

It absolutely is, of course it is. Now if someone's lecturing at you and you're not really interested in what they're saying, you're gonna have a very different kind of experience to that person rather than someone who's listening to you, asking you questions. So I'll give you another example. At MIT, we run something called Ask MIT Climate, where people write questions to us or they can call and leave a voicemail message about their questions about climate change. And we found it to be an incredibly powerful way for people to engage with scientific information. But it's not just us at MIT saying, here, here's what you should listen to and here's what you should know. It's us responding to other people and what they already are curious about and what they already care about. And we found when we launched that series, I mean, it took off. And we get like hundreds of thousands of people every month looking at all of our stuff. And it's interesting to see how that changes you know, like with the weather or with what's in the news, you know, right now, EVs is a big topic of conversation. It's also about like, you know, do wind turbines freeze up in the cold is a popular one right now. But if you're able to really respond to the questions that people have, not only are you going to be more effective, but also you're speaking right into something that they care about and they're gonna be with you and engage with you in a totally different kind of way.

[stinger]

Dave: 

It occurs to me that when thinking about climate science, vaccine science, or like, I don't know, quantum physics or anything really about the modern world, which is complicated, it occurs to me that I have, like, I've been working in climate change for 20 years. I've never read a bit of climate science in my life. I've like read a bit of the summary for dum -dums that the IPCC, the UN puts out. 

Laur: And even most of that. It's actually called the summary for policymakers. So I see the connection that you're making there. 

Dave: You know, and that's them writing in their, you know, most dum dum kind of language, you know, the scientists kind of going - 

Laur: 

and it's still actually quite technical. 

Dave: And it's still quite technical. But even then, like, I have no bloody idea. If you said to me, like, actually at the level of like, actually explain it to me from first principles, what's happening at the, I couldn't do it. And it's occurred to me like, It's all very well for the likes of me to get cross about like people trusting Donald Trump or people trusting Fox News or whatever, but I trust, I'm completely taking this on faith as well, right? Do you ever reflect on that yourself about that? How do you even know which way is up? 

Laur: 

Absolutely, I do. And you know, there's this, people sometimes call, use the term climate skeptics. Right? You've heard that term. I bet your listeners have heard that term. And it's not a great term because skepticism is a core foundation of science and the scientific method. You know, all scientific theories are open to doubt. We should be skeptical. It's actually a really positive term. It means you're not taking it on faith and you're looking for the evidence. 

Dave: 

Not the evidence that confirms what you think, but the evidence that might challenge what you think, right? 

Laur: 

Well, I mean, absolutely. And you should be very thoughtful about where you're getting information from and who you're getting information from and where those groups are getting their money from and what their motivations are. And then what the full story around that piece is. So, you know, I think about that a lot and this is actually a premise for the podcast that we run. We run a podcast called Today I Learn Climate or TIL Climate. And, in those conversations, there are 10 to 15 minute episodes where we help people get smart quickly on climate change. So you said, you know, I can explain the basics of climate change. Well, guess what? We have a 10 minute episode that explains the basics of, like what's actually going on on a molecular level with climate change. And you could listen to it, and you could understand it. And we spent a lot time - 

Dave: 

 You'd have to explain what a molecule is first, but yeah, carry on. 

Laur: Okay. Well, you know - All right. All right. All right. You might need - 

Dave:  I wasn't joking about the dum dum bit. I need this. 

Laur: 

Okay. Well, great. Well, great. Well, you should listen to it and let us know if it's too high level for you. But we really focus on, after you listen to this, like being able to explain to somebody else, right? Or like really finally getting this. But the main part that we do here is inside of TIL climate, as well as all the climate communications that we do, we don't steer away from the challenges of climate solutions. We don't steer away from how difficult some of the clean energy transition is going to be. And I think that kind of academic scientific honesty or that kind of just honesty about this really also is another way of building trust. You know, wind and solar energy are gonna create incredible benefits in our society. I mean, our air is gonna be cleaner, our climate's gonna be more stable. I mean, incredible benefits. At the same time, There's a bit of a hump that we have to get over in dealing with how we source the materials for these technologies and some of the social human environmental issues of the materials that go into these things. And we have this whole intermittency problem, which basically is, what do we do when the sun isn't shining? And there are solutions for all of these things, but there's some work that needs to be done in order to have those solutions really make a difference and get to scale. So by not steering away from those challenges and having a really honest conversation where we try to present the whole picture, that's another way to say, yeah, I can get your skepticism. You have questions about this. Here's what you need to think about and consider as you're looking at this entire challenge. 

Dave: 

And how would you, if you're five year old, give your explanation to your five year old about the blanket and your five year old goes ‘bollocks, how do you know that’? What would you say?

Laur: 

Oh my gosh. Well, that's, I mean, that's such a big, okay. So how do I know that? That's such a big question. Let me just sit for a little bit. Okay. Well, what I would say is there has been over 200 years of information. I'm going for a five -year -old here, right? There's people have been collecting information and data for the last 200 years and people from all around the world, hundreds and thousands of people are all finding the same thing. And that's how science works. It's that you have people who are learning from each other, sharing information from each other. And if they're all coming to the same conclusion and all sharing the same results, that tells us something about what's really going on here. I'd say something like that. And that's what the IPCC does, right? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is, you know, have a group, have hundreds of scientists who don't get paid for this work. And they are looking at all of the data, all of the published research from around the world on climate change. And they're drawing conclusions among all of that. This is not just a group of people who are making decisions inside of themselves. It's completely based on, and this is what we talk about the scientific consensus, right? This is where this term of scientific consensus comes from. So if there's one, If there's one paper that's showing one thing, but then 99 other papers are showing something different and they all have a sound scientific method, well, that, you know, there's some, there's some things, conclusions that we can draw there. I've heard the analogy, which I think is interesting about, you know, like if you visit a hundred doctors and 99 of them say you have cancer and one of them says you don't, well, what should you do? And what would reasonable people do in that scenario? And I think that's not a bad way of looking at it.

Dave: 

America seems to have a particular problem with this stuff. I mean, you're not the only country where climate views are really polarized, but I think you're probably the most dramatic and the most polarized from what I see. Why? What is it about? Why are Americans so weird about this stuff? What's going on? 

Laur: 

So you have to indulge me a little bit because I have a bit of a longer explanation about this, but I promise it's going to be really interesting. 

Dave: 

Oh, you got as long as you want. 

Laur: 

Okay. So you and your listeners might be surprised to know that surveys show that over half of Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change. So this is not - That actually, that is the sort of thing you might find surprising if all you looked at were some headlines. I mean, that's right. So first of all, that's important to understand here. There's rhetoric and then there's what surveys are telling us. But What do you think is the biggest predictor of an American's belief about climate change? 

Dave: 

Oh, I know this. It's what political party they identify with. 

Laur: Right. It is. It is. It completely is. I mean, some other people might guess their education or where they live, but it is the political party that they identify with. And several studies have shown us this, and we actually see this in the survey results as well. So when you survey folks about climate change and then segment it by political party, the differences are striking. So one of my favorite studies on this, unfortunately, is a bit old. It's from, I think 2018, but it shows us very clearly, you know, about 80 % of voters who identify as Democrats say that climate change is caused by human activity compared to only 40 % of those who identify as Republicans. So to answer your question, it's important to understand how people form their political identity. And the answer is people are largely born into it, right? And this, I mean, it can change, of course, over your course of your lifetime. If you go to college, that's a big formative experience for you to get exposed, but largely people are born into a political identity and they maintain that or a big strong aspect of that for their entire lives. And that has a huge determinant on your social identity, your core values, who you listen to. who you spend time with, what news and what information and networks you expose yourself to. And so what some really interesting political science research has shown us is that your political identity, libertarian, centrist, diehard liberal, you know, whatever, is also a form of group attachment. And this group attachment that people have to their political identity is similar to like their religious group or their ethnic group. I meant similar in the sense of like how strong it can be for people and their sense of identity. And when it comes to your support of a political party, your group attachment is even more influential than what you think about certain policies. So in a way, your association with a political party is more about your social identity than it is about what you actually believe politically. And in fact, political science is that what you think about politically is informed by your political identity and not the other way around. So to say it another way, like, you know, like, I myself was born to a pretty liberal family. And, you know, that actually informed my political beliefs, as opposed to me having a very, you know, sitting and thinking as a high schooler and being like, here's what I think about this issue and this how I think about this rule. And so on average, I fall into this political party, right? Most people don't do that. That's not really. So your social identity has a major influence on what you believe. And this gives us access to an important way of looking at how to approach climate change, communication and engagement and answering the question. So, so, uh, one, uh, so let's look at, you know, your question a little bit more head on, which is how did one political identity become more interested in climate change action, right? 

Dave: Other countries have got political identities as well. It doesn't follow that just because there are two parties, you're going to end up with one of them thinking it's a communist plot, right? 

Laur: 

Absolutely. And most, I should say, most people in a Republican party don't think it's a communist plot, right? There's a lot more variation and nuance. It's way more than just alarmist and denier. We do hear in the news and the way that some people talk in the media, it tends to come across that way. But when you actually look at surveys and even more importantly, when you talk to people, there is a lot more variety in people's beliefs on climate change than you'd have you think. And I'd be happy to talk more about that in a minute, because I think that's a really, really important point. But going back to your question, OK, you should know that in the States, it didn't used to be such a polarized topic. Republican presidents and senators campaigned and proposed bills on reducing climate pollution in the 80s and 90s and 2000s. the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is UNFCCC, which hosts the COPs, which people might know, like they do the negotiations that form things like the Paris Agreement, right? So basically the entity that creates these things like the Paris Agreement or facilitates things like the Paris Agreement, you know, that Senate was approved under Bush as an example. So the question is what happened? Right? So, okay, it didn't used to be so politically controversial and then it became controversial, what happened? So we could spend, I mean, an entire mini podcast, mini series trying to answer this question. It is so complex and so rich, but it's worth understanding two critical dynamics. And those two critical dynamics, one is the influence of fossil fuel interests. And second is the nature of the climate problem and its solutions, particularly in the United States. So. Influence of fossil fuel interests. It's a crucial piece of the answer. And if you want to learn more about that, this is really well documented in Professor Naomi Oreskes' 2011 book called Merchants of Doubt. And there's also a documentary for people who like documentaries better. And then her book and the findings that she has has been corroborated by other research as well. Just to give you one… example of what I'm talking about when I talk about the influence of fossil fuel interests, a study showed that fossil fuels, fossil fuel interests have outspent environmental advocates 10 to one on climate lobbying. And this was researched over a 16 year period between 2000 and 2016. So this is a critical piece of the answer. 

So let's go to the second, the second one that I mentioned, the nature of the climate problem and its solutions. So a big, part of it is solutions, the way that climate solutions have been framed in the United States seem unappealing or even destructive to certain communities. So solutions that come with - 

Dave:  Leave your car at home, attack on freedom, attack, right? That sort of thing. 

Laur: That's what we're talking about. Do less. Do less. Have less. Buy less. Burn less. Do Be less. But more importantly, more importantly, it's big governments saying this, right? It's someone else coming and saying, we are going to give the government more power, which is different from other, because I mean, you have in the UK and other countries, they're a little more comfortable with that than we are in the United States.

Dave:  I've seen Hamilton. I know how this works. 

Laur: Yeah, okay. All right.

Dave: 

So to the very heart of the debate right from the off, America is like big government or not. Right?

Laur:

 Exactly. These are things that, you know, the Jefferson's conservatives are again, so are suspicious of expanding government. Whereas this solution aligns much more with the progressive's sociopolitical identity, right? They're less confronted by that. But I'm saying that climate change, common solutions don't have to come with big government, but that's what the solutions that were being pushed by environmentalists in the decades where some of these stances were really formed. So it's easy for it to appear that Republicans have more to lose by acting on climate change. So you can even look into this in a different kind of way. So when I presented this at a class at MIT, I, okay, so I want you to imagine that you're looking at a map of the United States, because I've done this for the US, I haven't done this for other countries, but you look at a map of where gas wells and oil wells and coal mines are, and you compare that with a map of who around the country is least supportive of climate action. Guess what? You see a pretty clear correlation. So if you think about it, who would appear to lose from this low carbon economy where we weren't digging up or burning coal, drilling oil or gas. And guess what? Also, a lot of those areas are Republican. And I think environmentalists and climate activists have not been sensitive enough to this until recently. Right now there's conversations around a just transition and then kind of including people from coal mining communities, et cetera. in this kind of marginalized community category and like climate equity category, but that's recent thing. I mean, fossil fuels have brought, have influenced the culture. They're part of history, they're part of pride, they've created economic boom. They've built football fields and held Miss Carbon beauty pageant contests. Like not all of this stuff is evil, right? I mean, you could see it being manipulative and whatever. We can have another conversation about that, but like they really, fossil fuel companies have supported communities in a major way, communities with few economic alternatives. So if people from the outside, from DC or wherever are coming in and telling me, oh, guess what? We can't have this anymore because, relating to psychological distance, polar bears in the Arctic are gonna drown. Well, guess what? I'm gonna say bollocks to you about that, right? And so, it's this combination of like, it's this intersection of these kinds of realities, but then also how the environmental movement wasn't sensitive enough to these realities and didn't do a good enough job like we were talking about earlier, really connecting with these audiences and bringing them along in the solution. Again, that's changing, but it's unfortunately happening later and there's already an impact of that.

So there's a lot of stuff, I should say, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot more to share there. I mean, one thing that's really important is that you should know that Republican attitudes on climate change are changing. Young Republicans in particular are really concerned about climate change. They want conservative climate leadership. In fact, I have a part -time appointment with a group in the United States called Deploy US that is working on mobilizing political Republican leadership on climate change. So, you know, we are evolving into a new, different era.

Dave: 

For British listeners, that's happening over here as well. The next generation in general, with some exceptions, there's some stuff in the Financial Times today actually about how there is a hump of young Gen Z's who are actually proper, full Andrew Tate about things. There's a very reactionary, right leaning cohort building, which is worrying. But anyway, I suppose right back to the original topic of conversation. And therefore, you might be in an oil mining state or in a Republican oil mining state where fossil fuels have brought you great wealth, you don't trust the man, the man is arriving saying, we've got to shut that down, cause polar bears, right? And therefore you might go, I think this climate science is made up. So you might go, this thing that I really have to take on trust, because I've got no bloody idea what a molecule is and how it interacts with an ozone or whatever. So that's the order in which it works, right? In many ways, like the thing that a lot of people use as the start of their argument, which is that science is bad, therefore we should act. Loads of people end up there at the end. They're like, well, for all of these reasons, I reject this science. And so it feels like trying to take that science head on is completely missing the point, right? 

Laur: 

Yeah, absolutely. And then that's something that we all do in many ways, right? If we don't like the conclusion, we disagree with the premise or the data that supports that conclusion. Like we have mold in our basement and it's going to cost a lot of money to remediate that mold. And depending how I feel about money, is how important I feel or what I think about the mold, like how dangerous I think the mold is, right? That really shouldn't change. It's like the mold is as dangerous to our family as it's going to be. It really shouldn't change depending on how I feel about our financial situation, but it does. And there's a term for that too. It's a very common phenomenon. So it's not like, oh, these kinds of people think this way. No, we all do. It's a human condition. It just shows up differently for different people. We listen to the data that conforms with our beliefs and we discount the data that doesn't.

Dave: 

So look, you are a clearly brilliant climate storyteller. Something I'm intrigued by is whether you learned it or whether you intuitively get it or both. Like, are you just one of those people who's really great at thinking about stories and telling great stories? I guess I'm asking, is it a thing we can learn to be better at this stuff? 

Laur: 

100%, it is something that we can learn to be better at talking to people about climate change. A big part of it is listening. And… I'll tell you very, I know you wanted me to keep this brief, but I'm going to say very quickly. I remember in college, I was talking to my brother and I was talking about carbon pricing. And then he asked me a question about carbon pricing that I didn't have the answer to. And it was a really good question. And I realized in that moment that I was a hundred percent gung ho about something that I didn't understand. And that was a really formative moment for me. And that really shifts my way of thinking about politics as well.

You know, I'm registered as an independent because I'm skeptical. And I bring that to all of my communications as well. I really wanna understand something. I mean, not like I need to be expert on something, but I wanna be able to understand it enough to see if I can get behind it enough. And if we can have that same kind of, I guess, emotional distance, like if we can be aware of our political identity and distance ourselves for a moment so that we can think very carefull and thoughtfully about these issues, that's going to bring us a long way. And I think everybody has access to doing that. 

Dave: 

And so what would be your, the top three tips you might give to someone who's gone, right, great. I agree with Laur. I want to be better at climate storytelling. What do we all do starting now? 

Laur: 

Okay, great. Engage your audience's self interest. Listen for what they care about and speak into that if you can, even using their own language, right? Things that they feel comfortable with. Okay, that's one. Engage your audience's self interest. Two is leverage the social norms of your audience. Okay, that's not a very clear thing. What do I mean by that? If people that you're talking to can think that people who are like them, that they admire, that they trust, are part of a group that they identify with, care about this issue and are taking action, that leverages their own sense of social identity and social belonging. They're much more likely to listen and engage with you on that. And then third is recognizing that maybe more than anything, the messenger matters. Who is talking to them? Are they trustworthy? That matters. And you might not be the right person to talk to that audience or those people. So you have to recognize who they will trust? Who will they listen to? Get that person to connect with them instead. 

Dave: 

Wonderful stuff. Laur, please plug your stuff. You've got a podcast. You mentioned it. Also, how can people find out about you and the work that you do? Great. Thanks so much. So.

Laur: 

I run climate .mit .edu. We help people get smart quickly on climate change. You can ask us your questions and we work with MIT faculty to answer them in language that you can actually understand. And then we bring all of that to a podcast called TIL Climate, which you can find on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to. 10 to 15 minute episodes that help you get smart on climate change and we love hearing from our listeners too. So if you have questions or things that you want to learn about, let us know and we'll work on answering them.

Dave: 

Cracking stuff. Thank you, Laur, for that. I love talking to great climate storytellers. Funny old thing having that kind of conversation because this is sort of what I do for my day job and I love talking to other people who also do this for their day job. Reminding myself of some of the principles but hearing the way that other people talk about some of these core psychological things that affect how we think about climate change, i.e. that we're not really necessarily kitted out to understand big abstract things over there, that we need stuff brought close to home and the central role of trust and who we trust. And just as it happens for big climate science stuff, it can also happen just in our day -to -day lives. And I love her emphasis on reflecting on who you trust, reflecting on ourselves. If people think something different about the world to you, it doesn't mean they're an idiot, it doesn't mean they're evil, it just means they see things a bit differently to you. You trust some things, you take some stuff on faith, you've probably found yourself, as Laur said at the end there, arguing about something you don't really understand. It's always worth having a little bit of a reflection on that, I think, before shrieking too much at someone who thinks something that you don't. 

I shall be back next time. Thank you so much to everyone who supports the show. A reminder about the Patreon, slash, YourBrainOnClimate. Please drop me a review. Email me on hello at yourbrainonclimate .com. If you want to say something, I'm on Twitter at BrainClimate. Otherwise, I love you very much. I will speak to you again soon. Goodbye.