Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
We had some people come to visit the church a while ago, pre-coronavirus, of course, and they had come from some distance, so they wanted to have lunch with the pastor. So I went along, and in the course of conversation, they found out that the pastor's wife was a climate scientist.
That's Catherine Hayhoe. She's a climate scientist, an atmospheric scientist to be exact, and she's professor of political science at Texas Tech University. She's also an evangelical Christian, the daughter of missionaries and the wife of a Texan pastor. That can lead to some pretty interesting conversations. In disbelief, the man leaned across the table to me and said, do you believe in climate change?
"Oh no," I said cheerfully, "I don't." "What do you mean?" He said, "I thought you were a climate scientist." I said, "Well, I don't believe in it because it's not a religion. I believe in God and I believe that God gave us a sound mind to study his creation so we can figure out what's happening. So I don't believe the planet is warming, I know it is because through studying God's creation, it is clear that we are getting warmer and humans are responsible and the impacts are serious.
So by rejecting the narrative that climate change is a false environmental earth-worshipping religion, we were able to have a really constructive conversation that began with what we agreed on, which is that we both believe in God. We both believe that this is God's creation. We both believe that God gave us the sound mind that we have. But what do we see when we use that mind to look at God's creation? That's key. Professor Hayhoe is a bit of a rock star in the climate world.
Her superpower, to change metaphors, is the ability to talk to just about anyone about climate change. Her 2018 TED Talk, arguing that the most important thing you could do for climate change is just talk about it, has been
has been viewed three and a half million times. She told Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year that she's not so much trying to convert people to the climate cause as show them that they already care. She's been called a national treasure by the director of the Yale program on climate change communication. The New York Times labeled her one of America's most effective communicators on the topic.
And she's been given the United Nations highest environmental honor, declared a champion of the earth. See, she sounds like a superhero. It was someone on Twitter who first introduced me to Catherine and suggested we have her on the show. So thanks for that. You know who you are.
A year later, we eventually made it happen, and boy, am I glad we did. It's a fraught topic, I know that, whatever side you're on, but Professor Hayhoe says it doesn't have to be. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeception. MUSIC
Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academic. Every week we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, culture or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, especially today, we'll be trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth...
I know you're a pro, so I'll just get on with the interview and stop jabbering. You talk about climate change for a living. So what's your elevator pitch when you've got 30 seconds to say what you do? Our planet has a natural blanket of heat-trapping gases that keep us over 30 degrees warmer than we would be otherwise. In fact, we would be a frozen ball of ice if it weren't for this natural blanket.
So if it's natural, what's the problem? The problem is that by digging up coal and then natural gas and oil and burning it, we are releasing heat trapping gases that are wrapping an extra blanket around our planet that it does not need. And just like you would, if someone snuck into your room at night and put an extra blanket on you, you would heat up and say, hey, I didn't need this extra blanket. In the same way, our planet is heating up too. And what's the problem with that?
Our planet has been warmer and cooler in the past, but for us humans, our climate over the course of human civilization has been remarkably stable. Just like Goldilocks, we don't want it too hot. We don't want it too cold. We want it just right. But today, climate is changing faster than any time in the history of our civilization on this planet.
And our agricultural systems, our water systems, our infrastructure, our public services, our economy, where and how we build our homes, all of this is predicated on the assumption of a stable climate. And that assumption has been accurate over the last hundreds and even thousands of years, but it's no longer accurate today. Christianity has a weird relationship to the climate cause.
On the one hand, at least in theory, Christians have more reason than most to care for the Earth. They reckon it's God's good creation, after all. On the other hand, quite a number of the faithful are sceptical about climate change. This is nowhere more pronounced than in the United States, where a Pew Research poll found that only a third of white evangelical Protestants believed climate change was the result of human activity.
Two-thirds doubt it. So what's going on here? Those surveys also find that white Catholics are just as resistant as white evangelicals, whereas Hispanic Catholics in the United States are among the most concerned people about climate change, and black Protestants are also quite concerned as well. So when social scientists, and this is what social scientists do, when they start to disentangle that to figure out, well, what's driving that?
It turns out it is not where you go to church on Sunday or Saturday or not at all that's causing this. And you can see this from the fact that Hispanic Catholics and white Catholics end up at polar opposite ends of the spectrum. And in the United States, climate change has been at the very top of the list of the most politicized issues in the country for years.
And sadly, it is heading in that direction in Canada, in Australia, in the UK and beyond as well, to where now the number one predictor of whether you agree with simple facts that we've known from science since the 1800s is not how educated you are, not how much science you know, not how smart you are, and definitely not where you go to church. It is simply where we fall on the political spectrum.
Regardless of where you fall on that political spectrum, Catherine says climate change is not about belief. There are undisputed facts about climate change. There are some things we simply shouldn't be arguing about anymore. We scientists love to argue and we are still arguing today. But we're not arguing over whether climate is changing and humans are responsible because that argument was put to bed 100 years ago.
That's how long we've known that digging up and burning coal and gas and oil was wrapping this extra blanket around the planet. Today, we are arguing over things like, will Greenland melt in years?
100 years or 200 years? Will sea level rise by three feet or eight feet during our lifetime? These are the types of arguments scientists are having today, and none of them are good news. The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. And your biggest issue is... Your biggest issue is...
That's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, as she's more famously known. She's a member of the US House of Representatives from New York's 14th District and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. My youngest daughter thinks she rocks. I think she saw her in a TikTok video or something.
AOC made those remarks at the beginning of 2019 and was immediately tagged by the conservative press as an alarmist. Others rushed to her defence, arguing that while we can quibble about AOC's choice of words, the crux of what she said is true. The world as we know it might soon end. Catherine is adamant that's not what people need to hear.
No, I don't think it's the right message either scientifically or from a communication perspective. Because if the world is going to end anyways, why should we do anything to fix it, right? Eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow we die, as Solomon said.
And joining us now in the studio is Richard Westbrook, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the EPA. Welcome. Thank you. Mr. Westbrook, you've spent most of your professional career as a climate scientist in the public sector. Yes, 10 years as a supervisor. You're listening now to part of an episode from Season 3 of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. It's not quite the West Wing, but it's pretty good.
The main character, Will McAvoy, is a news anchor for a major broadcaster, basically CNN. And he's introducing his next interviewee, a spokesperson from the Environmental Protection Agency in the US. It's based on real events. In 2013, reports circulated that the world was about to pass a long-feared milestone. The global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about to exceed 400 points per
million. That's a level not seen on Earth for millions of years. Tell us about the findings in the report that was just released. The latest measurements taken at Mauna Loa in Hawaii indicate a CO2 level of 400 parts per million. Just so we know what we're talking about, if you were a doctor and we were the patient, what's your prognosis? A thousand years? Two thousand years? A person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet.
So what can we do to reverse this? There's a lot we could do. Go ahead, Fred. If it were 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, but now, no.
Let's see if we can't find a better spin. People are starting their weekends. The report says we can release 565 more gigatons of CO2 without the effects being calamitous. It says we can only release 565 gigatons. So what if we only release 564? Well then we would have a reasonable shot at some form of dystopian, post-apocalyptic life, but... The carbon dioxide in the oil that we've already leased is 2,795 gigatons. So...
Are you going to get in trouble for saying this publicly? Who cares? Mr. Westbrook, we want to inform people, but we don't want to alarm them. Can you give us a reason to be optimistic? Well, that's the thing, Will. Americans are optimistic by nature. And if we face this problem head on, if we listen to our best scientists and act decisively and passionately, I still don't see any way we can survive. Okay. Richard Westbrook, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the...
What you missed are the faces on the actors in the studio while the interview is going on. They are shell-shocked. A guy from the government has just come on TV to say there's nothing that can be done. The situation is hopeless.
It's the type of news that would normally send the fictitious Will McAvoy home for a stiff drink. Except in the show, there's no follow-up. It's just left hanging. A government official announces doomsday on national TV and then we just move right along. Which, by the way, is exactly Catherine's point about the dangers of alarmist messages. It actually creates apathy.
The world did pass 400 points per million of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2013.
A few months ago, in June 2020, the New York Times reported the latest atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide measurements, 417.2 parts per million. So is now the time to panic? The Yale Environment 360 magazine, which is pretty authoritative, says there's nothing particularly magical about the number 400 for CO2 levels.
It served as a symbolic target, a red line which, when crossed, does indicate a danger zone for climate change. We'll put a link in the show notes. Anyway, Catherine agrees. But also scientifically, we know that there's no magic number or magic threshold. So if we could stay below one and a half degrees or two degrees, that doesn't mean that everything will be OK.
We are already experiencing the impacts of climate change today. Climate change is supersizing the bushfires that Australia experienced in early 2020, the wildfires that California and Oregon are experiencing now in late 2020,
Climate change is supersizing the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S., the typhoons and the cyclones elsewhere. It's increasing the risk of heavy precipitation events, of flooding. It's making our droughts longer and stronger and increasing our extreme heat. Many of the impacts are already here today.
But we do know that the faster we reduce our carbon emissions, the better off we'll be. It's like there's no magic number of cigarettes you can smoke to prevent all lung damage other than zero. And you can't just smoke 9,999 cigarettes. But as long as you don't smoke number 10,000, you'll be okay. That's not the way it works.
In the same way, there's no magic amount of carbon we can produce other than zero to still be okay. But we do know that the best time to stop smoking is as soon as possible. And in the same way, we know that the best time to start reducing our carbon emissions is now. And the more we reduce them and the faster we do it, the better off we will all be.
Michael Schellenberger, thanks so much for joining us. How does someone go from being a Time magazine environmental hero to apologising for climate alarmism?
Well, I've been working on environmental issues for a really long time. That's environmentalist Michael Schellenberger being interviewed on Sky News Australia. Earlier this year, Schellenberger wrote an essay that made the front page of Australia's national broadsheet, The Australian. The piece was titled, Sorry, But I Cried Wolf on Climate Change.
In it, he wrote, on behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I'd like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created. He's also written a book called Apocalypse Never, Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
I've seen a lot by now and I know the science well enough to know that climate change is not a catastrophic threat. I kept waiting for climate scientists to speak out against the alarmism, these apocalyptic, the world's going to end, billions will die, all that stuff last year. Nobody did. Well, I am a scientist. And on behalf of scientists, I would like to say that it is very likely to be worse than
Not better than the science says.
I cannot speak to environmentalists. I cannot speak to people who have degrees in global peace studies like he does. But I can speak to scientists who have been studying this since the 1800s. And what we know is it is real. It is definitely human caused. The impacts are serious. And if there will be any surprises in what science knows today, those surprises are unfortunately likely to be worse rather than better.
Greenland melting six times faster than it was in the 1990s. Sea level rising faster. Hurricanes getting supersized. Bushfires burning much greater area than we imagined. In February, I was having dinner with one of my colleagues who studies wildfire around the world. And he was nearly in tears over how scientifically we have underestimated the rate at which human-caused climate change is affecting wildfires.
It was almost exactly a year ago today that the Gospers Mountain megafire started in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, my home state. It was called the Monster and it was Australia's biggest ever bushfire started from a single ignition point.
All it took was a series of unseasonably hot days in October and a bolt of lightning. The fire raged for two and a half months before firefighters could declare it contained. And in that time, the monster had destroyed an area of 1.2 million acres. That's seven times the size of Singapore. It's larger than the US state of Rhode Island. That's just one bushfire.
Across Australia last summer, in the most catastrophic bushfire season we've ever had, nearly 42 million acres were burned. California also set a new record in its wildfire season, 4 million acres burned, making it the state's worst fire season. And that number will grow as we're recording this. The August Complex megafire in the Coast Range of Northern California is still not completely contained.
We're thinking of our listeners up there in Northern California and Oregon. I hope you're safe. Climate change doesn't cause a wildfire to happen. Wildfires are ignited by lightning or by generally human accidents or occasionally by arson, but not nearly as much as the disinformation circling the internet claims. But once those wildfires are ignited, here's where climate change comes in. Imagine tossing a match on a pile of green wood.
What happens? Very little. It kind of smokes, it smolders, you might get a little bit of burning, but not much. Then imagine if a match is tossed on top of a pile of dry brush.
It ignites immediately, it turns into a bonfire, and sparks might even fly off and start fires in the surroundings. That's the difference between a regular condition versus climate change. Climate change is leading to drier vegetation, drier conditions, such that when those wildfires and bushfires begin, they are burning much greater area today than they used to 50 or 100 years ago. As I talk to you, Australia is heading into a new bushfire season. Lord have mercy.
In 1967, historian Lynn White wrote an influential piece in the journal Science, basically blaming the Christian worldview for the state of the environment today. Could Christianity be to blame for the wildfires, for the ever-increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere? Find out after the break.
This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.
And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.
Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith, he's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.
You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions.
68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.
It pushed his family into a financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.
There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash AnglicanAid.
and make a tax-deductible donation to help this wonderful organisation give people like Turat a second chance. That's anglicanaid.org.au forward slash undeceptions. Way back in 1967, the historian Lynn White wrote an influential piece in the Science Journal
where he basically said the Christian worldview is responsible for this degradation of the planet. And he said, we shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason to exist save to serve man. What do you think of that striking assessment that basically Christianity is to blame?
would agree with that quote with just one essential modification to it. And the modification is this, a selfish ideological mindset that is justified by a misinterpretation of the Bible is responsible for the problem. Let me explain. So in Genesis 1, it says that humans have responsibility to Radha, every living thing on this planet.
And that word was translated in the King James Version as have dominion over. And it has been translated subsequently as being responsible for or caring for every living thing on this planet. And then in Genesis 2, it goes on to talk about how we are to abod and shamar the planet, which has the concept of taking care of, of being a guardian over, of being a caretaker or a steward for.
So that word, Radha, has been taken out of context to say, oh, if we have dominion over the planet, then we can extract every resource this planet has. We can use it for our own good. And when we're done exploiting the planet, God will push the eject button and we'll all go away.
What that fails to take into account, though, is the fact that the same word rada is used elsewhere in the Bible. And in fact, it's even used to contrast people who rule for selfish gain versus people who are intended to be servant leaders, people who care for and protect and guard and keep what they've been given.
So it is not a Christian ethos that has led to the problem that we're in. It is an anti-Christian ethos that have been out for number one for ourselves, for what we can get rather than caring for and loving each other, our sisters and our brothers around the planet, the poor and the vulnerable who are most affected by the impacts of a changing climate, by the extraction of fossil fuels, by the air and water pollution that results, as well as every other living thing on this planet too that God created.
Let's press pause. I've got a five-minute Jesus for you. Christianity gets whacked from two different sides on the issue of the environment, and it's sometimes deserved.
French atheist Michel Onfray has said that Christianity has this ascetic streak that denigrates the body and the good earth. Glorification of a fictional beyond, he says, prevents full enjoyment of the real here below. The religion of the one God seeks to promote self-hatred to the detriment of the body, to discredit the intelligence, to despise the flesh.
Of course, there have been Christians like that. I could name them. The question is, is that viewpoint logically consistent with Genesis 1, the opening page of the Bible, which basically says that a good God graced good matter into existence as a gift.
Genesis 1 calls the physical environment, the creation, good. No fewer than seven times. God made the light and the text says, and it was good. Then he makes the seas and they're good, the heavenly bodies and the animals and they're all good. And then just in case you missed it, the last line of the whole thing says, God saw all that he'd made and it was very good.
The Apostle Paul in the New Testament echoes the same theme. For everything God created is good, he says, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. That's 1 Timothy 4. I can't think of any other traditional historical writing from Greece or Rome or from the Far East that works so hard from the opening page to insist that physical creation is good.
Not haphazard, unpredictable, the enemy, accidental. No, it's a work of wonder and artistry. It's good, a cause for gratitude. Thanksgiving, as Paul puts it. There's an equal and opposite criticism, sometimes levelled at Christianity and the environment. It's Lynn White's famous argument in the journal Science that Christianity is to blame for the West's rapacious approach to the environment.
In an article titled The Historical Roots of Our Modern Ecological Crisis, he writes, In antiquity, every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. Before one cut down a tree, mined a mountain or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation and to keep it placated.
By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. That's in the journal Science, March 1967, by the way. It's interesting that Lynn White's argument is virtually the opposite of Michel Onfray's criticism.
Christianity somehow manages to be so otherworldly it renounces earthly resources and then turns out to be the cause of the ravenous exploitation of the earth. Can it really be both? I think it's neither. I don't deny that some Christians have exploited nature in a mood of indifference. But is that logically consistent with believing Genesis 1? With believing the Apostle Paul? That the good God graced good matter into existence as a gift?
And I'd go further. In some ways, the Bible's greatest endorsement of the preciousness of physical creation comes not from Genesis or from Paul, but from Jesus. Now, Jesus didn't say anything directly about the environment, let alone climate change, so I don't want to claim too much here. But two things Jesus said and did elevate the importance of physical creation to a magnificent degree. First,
Jesus studiously avoided teaching the normal pagan, that's Greek and Roman view, of an afterlife characterized by spirit, completely devoid of bodily and environmental life. No, Jesus reiterated the ancient Jewish conviction that the creator would not abandon creation in some ghostly eternal future, but promised to renew it.
In Isaiah 65 in the Old Testament, this promised future is described as a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth, it says. Jesus does something similar when he calls the future kingdom of God the renewal of all things. That's in Matthew 19.28. Now the Greek term used here in Matthew is palingenesia. That's the word again and genesis.
It's another Genesis. The creation matters so much to Christ that what he promised was the renewal of creation, not its removal. The other thing in the Jesus story that underlines the importance of physical creation is the very punchline of the Christian gospel, actually. Jesus rose again bodily.
All four Gospels and the New Testament epistles stress that Jesus wasn't elevated to a spiritual life after his death. He was raised in a body. The Gospels describe him eating a meal and showing his disciples his hands and feet. It's not a mere resuscitation either. The New Testament speaks of it as a renewal, a glorification of physical reality. Now, I know plenty of listeners won't believe any of that, but my point is really simple.
The Christian belief in bodily resurrection affirms the physical creation in an extraordinary way. It says that God loves material reality so much, he intends not to remove it, but to renew it. From beginning to end, Christianity affirms the importance, the goodness of physical creation.
Christians have sometimes neglected this theme and denied and denigrated the good earth, that's for sure. Others have gone the other way and treated the creation as a thing to be exploited and abused. But both are Christian heresies, a skewing of the truth that the creation is a sacred gift entrusted to our care. You can press play now.
So I grew up in a Christian home with a dad who was a science teacher who taught me not only that science is the coolest thing you could possibly study, but if we believe that God created this universe, then what is science other than trying to figure out what he was thinking when he did it?
So going to school, I was studying astrophysics because it's amazing to think that using just the brains God has given us, we can look at the far reaches of the universe. And there's a long history of Christians in astrophysics. But I had almost finished my undergraduate degree when I needed an extra course to finish. And I saw this new class over in the geography department on climate science. So I thought, oh, well, that looks interesting. Why not take it?
So growing up in Canada, I knew that climate change was real, but I had always mentally lumped it with environmental issues that environmentalists cared about. And if you're not an environmentalist, then you wish them well. They're the ones who worry about it. And you go do whatever it is that you do. Taking this class on climate change, though, completely shocked me because I learned that climate change is not only what you might consider an environmental issue. It's an everything issue.
Climate change affects our health. It affects the air that we breathe and the water that we drink. It affects how much food we have and how nutritious it is. It affects things like political instability and refugee crises. And more than anything else, what touched me is learning that climate change disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.
I grew up as a missionary kid in South America. So I had friends who lived in homes that were made of mud bricks or cardboard boxes. And when the rains came, I knew how it would wash away entire neighborhoods and people had no recourse. There's no insurance there. There's no way to bail yourself out. If your home is gone, it is gone.
And people who live on the edge of poverty are incredibly vulnerable. When the crops fail, there's nothing to feed their families with. When the water is polluted, they suffer the impacts.
So learning that, I thought to myself, how can I not study this critical global issue? How can I truly be loving my neighbor if I close my eyes to this issue and go on by? We know from the parable of the Good Samaritan that many people do. But I felt like I couldn't. And the reason why I couldn't was because of my faith. So that's why I do what I do. And that's why I am who I am. The reason why I am a climate scientist is because I'm a Christian, not in spite of it.
My name is James Bagwan. I'm a minister of
I'm Minister of the Methodist Church in Fiji, serving as General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches. We're in the Pacific. We're on the front lines of climate change in the context of rising sea levels, ocean warmth and acidification, as well as extreme weather patterns. And we're going into a La Nina situation.
at the moment. So, yeah, we are struggling with the sometimes lack of urgency around the issue of climate change. The Pacific Islands cover a region of more than 300,000 square miles, incorporating well-known holiday destinations like Hawaii, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands. But for 11 million people, the Pacific Islands are home.
And for almost 150,000 of them, these homes are in danger. You know, the image that many people have of the Pacific, this idyllic image of, you know, sun-kissed beaches, etc., is all very nice. But when we think about the different make-ups of the Pacific Islands, you have volcanic islands, which have mountains and peaks and high mountains.
high peaks, so you have from the high peaks all the way down to the coast, but at the same time you have a lot of coral atolls. And the islands of Kiribati to Valu, many others across the Pacific in both Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia.
are the ones that are most at risk in the context of climate change and rising sea levels because they sit so low on the ocean in terms of not having...
uh, uh, mountains. And so rising sea levels means one, um, the encroachment of the sea onto the land. And this happens also in the context of the bigger islands, uh, where you have coastal inundation being Islanders, we live close to the sea. Um, and, um, we are already seeing in, in many parts of the Pacific where, um,
The sea is now encroaching into communities across over sea walls that have been built in the past, moving into homes. And while for some of the bigger islands, there is the possibility of moving further inland, which is a complex issue in itself. When it comes to coral atolls, they're simply...
not enough places for them to move into. As we continue to experience the impacts of climate change, the Pacific Conference of Churches and Pacific Church leaders have been speaking out on climate change for well over a decade and a half now.
Well, before some governments began to take this issue seriously, the first aspect of resilience is recognizing that or encouraging our Pacific Island communities to have hope.
in the context, in the face of climate change, to stand up and speak for justice. And to borrow a phrase from our Pacific climate warriors, to embody the fact that we are not drowning, we are fighting, and that our lives, the lives of our children, the lives of our Pacific community, both human and not human, are worth fighting for.
These islands are on the front line of climate change. Yet thousands of kilometres away, some politicians still bicker about whether climate change is having a real effect.
Despite the evidence, Catherine Hayhoe is still getting questions from her audience about whether she really just supports this because of her politics. In her famous TED talk, she mentioned a question she was once asked by a university student in Texas. I was dying to repeat the question. I have to ask you, aren't you just a Democrat?
I know why you're asking me that question. So many people think that I am simply because I'm a climate scientist. But first of all, I'm Canadian, not American. And second of all, a thermometer does not give you a different answer depending on how you vote. Climate is changing and humans are responsible. The impacts are serious and we need to act now.
Where politics legitimately comes into it, though, is in asking what do we do? How do we reduce our carbon emissions? There's a lot of different ways we can do that. There's a lot of different technology that we can use. There's a lot of different lifestyle choices we can implement. And those should be the subject of political debate. As a scientist, I can say that we need policies to cut carbon emissions because our individual actions are not enough.
even if those of us who can do as much as we can did everything we could, that wouldn't be enough to make a dent in it. We need a system-wide change. So for example, a system-wide change could help people afford a plug-in car who can't afford one now, for example. Or they could ensure that we can get our energy or our electricity from clean sources, whereas we can't afford to switch to a clean energy provider, possibly in the place where we live.
So we need policies that cut carbon emissions, and that's what the science says. But the science doesn't tell us how to do it. So as a human, I would say we also need policies that make sure that the poorest and most vulnerable people are not left behind, that they're not harmed by skyrocketing energy prices. I would say that we also need policies to make sure that we're preparing for the impacts of climate change, some of which are unavoidable because they're already here today, as well as cutting our carbon emissions.
And I would say, too, as a human, again, not a scientist, that we need policies that have appeal across the political spectrum. Otherwise, it just turns into a football. Every time, you know, one party gets elected, they put this in place. And then as soon as the next party is elected, they put that in place. And we saw this happen in Australia where there was a price on carbon and then it got taken off by the next party.
So from that perspective, I think something that has at least some bipartisan appeal that actually works to cut carbon and that takes care of what the Bible refers to as the least among us. Those are the types of policies that we need. Catherine's job is to talk to people about climate change. She's good at it, but it's not easy. Coming up against skepticism or downright denial again and again, she says, can be exhausting.
You always sound to me very chirpy, but are there not sometimes when you feel grief that the message isn't getting through? Yes, absolutely. I feel grief. I feel frustration. And I
I think probably one of the most discouraging things, and I'm sure you'll understand this, many people listening will too. One of the most discouraging things to me personally is when people who identify as Christians reach out to me specifically to attack me.
To call me a handmaiden of the Antichrist, a liar, a whore. Yeah, a Democrat. I know, you know, handmaiden of the Antichrist, Democrat, not quite sure which one's worse there. But yes, the number of people who call themselves Christians who specifically embody hatred, the opposite of love,
is just absolutely discouraging. And so more than anything, I find myself asking God, why and how do people who claim
that they love you, who claim that they believe in you. How can they behave like this? But, you know, in the Bible, there's verses showing that this is an age-old human problem. You know, in the Psalms and the prophets, they say, why do the wicked flourish like weeds while we wither as if in dry ground? So the age-old human problem really is how our world is so broken and how we ourselves as humans are
So often replace God with false idols. We replace God with our political ideology. We replace God with a focus on ourselves. We let our statement of faith be written by our politics rather than the Bible.
And I think it's really a reminder to me almost every day to really make sure that I am looking to God for my identity, that I am looking to my theology for my values. Because when it all comes down to it, that's really where our hope comes from. And one of my favorite verses comes from Romans where it talks about hope, because we don't find hope in the science. Every new scientific result that comes out, it seems like is scarier or more depressing than the one before. Yeah.
We don't find hope in politics either. People in politics are always going to disappoint us, no matter who they are and what they say. But for us as believers, we know that hope, as it says in Romans, hope begins with suffering, which is kind of a strange place for hope to begin. It begins with suffering because suffering builds perseverance and perseverance builds character. And that will not disappoint because our hope is eventually placed in God. So is that not...
A reason not to act now. I mean, sometimes it's thrown at believers who have an eschatology, a view of God making everything right in the future.
It's sometimes said, oh, well, then that's a reason to sit by the beach because, you know, ultimately it's all going to be fixed. So why bother now? Well, exactly. That's probably one of the biggest arguments people have. And one of the biggest problems that eschatology has today, the idea that if it's all going away in the future, why does what we do today matter?
Eschatology, by the way, just refers to the theology of last things, what the climax of history looks like. We are doing a whole episode on the end of the world in a few weeks. We've got Richard Borkham of Cambridge and Alyssa Wilkinson from Vox, of all places. But for now, I'm just asking whether all this end of the world business means that Christians won't be active helping the earth here and now.
Of course, people were people back when the New Testament was being written too. And it's very interesting because if you read Thessalonians very carefully, it seems like they had the same problem. And so the apostle Paul wrote to them very strongly and he didn't mince any words. And he basically in a nutshell said, get off your rear, get off your lazy boy chair, get a job. Don't just quit your job and wait around for the end of the world. Get a job because you have things to do. Feed the poor, care for the widows and the orphans.
um other other places it says we are to walk in the good works that were prepared for us in advance we're not to worry about the future that's in god's hands we're not to worry about the past because we can't change it anymore we are to do what we can today what's in front of us here and now because that is what has been prepared for us no matter what we expect to happen in the future so that attitude of oh it doesn't it doesn't matter it's all going to end anyways i'll just sit back and
fold my hands, that attitude is another example of unchristian theology that we've just kind of slapped a Jesus label on and made it look as if it's Christian when it's not. It can feel like having a rational conversation about climate change is very near impossible. It's too politicized. It's too grounded in belief and emotion rather than fact. And we're getting further and further apart.
So this is a real problem for public discourse, you know, when an issue like this becomes more political than anything else.
You know, one side feels the need to turn up the heat of the rhetoric. The other side turns up the skepticism dial. So the other side has to turn up the heat even more. And before you know it, I mean, it's just, well, we are where we are. How do you get out of that? Do you have any strategies at the rhetorical level for having a sensible conversation on this?
You're absolutely right. In today's polarized environment, whenever anything comes up that we don't agree about, we immediately just start butting heads because we focus on what most divides us. And one side shows up, you know, with all your scientific reports and data and starts hitting somebody else upside the head with it. And the other person obviously feels attacked by that and so responds as if they would respond to a threat rather than to information. And that just deepens the chasm between us rather than building a bridge over the divide.
I've found, though, that there is a way past this. And the way past this begins with focusing on what unites us rather than what divides us. So if we are able to begin a conversation over something that we agree with first, then
And it could be something as simple as the fact that we love our kids, we enjoy cooking or knitting, or we live in the same place, or we believe in the same God, or we attend the same church, or we belong to the same rotary club, or the same golf club, or the same birding association. If we can begin that conversation with something we agree on, number one, and then number two, connect the dots to how climate change is affecting what we both already care about.
Whether it's our children, whether what we believe as Christians, whether it's the place where we live or the things that we care about. And then step number three is to make sure that we bring up a positive constructive solution to climate change that the person we're talking to could agree with. Because even though most objections to climate change are couched in science-y sounding terms...
If you have a conversation with anyone about it that's longer than one minute long, the conversation will, nine times out of ten, take an abrupt right turn into, I don't want to fill in the blank. I don't want a carbon tax. I don't want to destroy the economy. I don't want the government telling me what to do.
99.9% of our objections to climate change have nothing to do with the science. They have everything to do with solution aversion. We think the only solutions are negative or punitive or harmful.
So bonding over shared values, connecting to how climate change is affecting us here and now today, and then inspiring with a solution that actually could make a difference. It could save us money. It could help poor people. It could lead to cleaner air. It could help us be better stewards of God's creation. Those three steps are absolutely key to constructive conversations.
Catherine is the most hopeful climate change scientist I know, which is excellent because she's the only one I know. She's not alarmist. She's calm, conciliatory and genuinely interested in finding common ground. She wants to teach us how to live in a warming world and living requires hope, rational hope.
That partly means understanding how bad the problem is, not covering our eyes to it. But it also means knowing that by acting, we can alter our future for the environment and for the poorest of the poor who are experiencing the effects of climate change more than most.
Talking about it calmly is really the first step, and Catherine is hopeful that despite the polarisation, people's minds are changing.
Let me share a story with you, though, that's from Australia. So a good friend of mine, good colleague is John Cook. He is also a Christian as well as a scientist who studies how we interact with false information. John got into this because every time he would go home for dinner, his father would say, well, John, I hear there's more polar bears now than there ever have been. How can you say that climate change is causing them to go extinct?
So John would go off and find all the information showing that, yes, polar bear populations are in fact decreasing and they are threatened by climate change. And he would bring it to his father and his father would just come up with a new objection. Well, John, I heard that sea level isn't rising after all. I mean, look at these old photos of the harbor. It doesn't look like it's any higher than it used to be. Well, depending on when you take the photo, whether at high tide or low tide, you can come up with very different pictures.
So John turned into a global expert of debunking science-y sounding myths about climate change. He went back and did a PhD on this. He created the website Skeptical Science that answers 198 science-y sounding objections to climate change. And do you think any of this convinced his father? No, it did not. But then there was a government rebate on solar panels in the neighborhood where his father lived.
So his father, being a shrewd fiscal conservative, crunched the numbers, figured out how much money he would save, got the solar panels, ended up saving even more money, started emailing John every time he got his bill. John, you wouldn't believe how much money I've saved on the solar panels now. Started boasting to everybody about how much money he was saving. And about two years afterwards, he and John were having dinner, and he turned to John and he said,
Well, you know, John, of course global warming is real, and I've always thought so. But did I show you my latest bill for my solar panels and how much I've saved? And John said he nearly fell off his chair because not only had his father changed his mind, he had forgotten that he ever disagreed. And what had changed his mind? A positive, constructive, beneficial solution. ♪
Got questions about this or other episodes? I'd love to hear them and I'll have a crack at answering them in our upcoming Q&A episode. You can tweet us at Undeceptions, send an email to questions at undeceptions.com or record your question and we'll play it on the show. Just go to undeceptions.com, scroll down and hit the record button.
And while you're there, check out the new Undeceptions library. Last season, I promised to give you loads of audio and print content designed to undeceive. Well, we've done it and we're constantly adding more. So take a look and let me know what you think.
Next episode, we're getting musical, chatting with the wonderful Professor Jeremy Begbie about the ways music shapes us and speaks of the beauty and discord in our world. I might have actually cried in the making of the episode. See ya.
Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by Kayleigh Payne and directed by Mark Hadley, who tells me he also directed The West Wing and The Newsroom. Our theme song is by Bach, arranged by me and played by the fabulous Undeceptions band. Editing is by Nathaniel Schumach. Thanks, Nat. Head to undeceptions.com. You'll find show notes and other stuff related to our episodes. Episode 27, chime one in three, two...
You're listening now to part of an episode from season three of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. It's not quite the West Wing, but it's pretty good. Do you agree, Kayleigh? Mark's never heard of either. The main character will... And he's back! Please, go on with the show. Are we recording still? Yes. Okay. Sorry about that. But you've never seen the West Wing.
Oh, go away. You have not. I own the box set. Really? Yeah, and all of the newsroom seasons too. Wow. Okay. Please, any time you're ready. Fantastic.