A Climate Scientist Makes the Case for Hope with Katharine Hayhoe

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

News, Trump, Opinion, Usc, California, Polls, Debates, Strategists, University, Education, Government, Universitysoutherncalifornia, America, Presidential, Dornsife, Bipartisanship, School, Democrat, Primaries, Elections, Shrum, Primary, News Commentary, Republican, Analysis, General, Polarization, International, Journalists, Federal, Commentary, Election, National, Conversation, Race, Centerpoliticalfuture, Conversations, Murphy, Moderator, Political, Coverage, Biden, Podcast, Politics

5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Climate change is one of the most divisive issues in our country today. But this wasn’t the case 20 years ago. How did we get here? Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist and chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy as well as a professor at Texas Tech University. And she’s the author of a new book called Saving Us - a Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. In this episode, Katharine explains how climate change became so polarizing, and how each of us can play a part in bridging the divide by starting conversations (even if we never use the words ‘climate’ and ‘change’ together.) She gives examples of how she, an evangelical Christian, talks to other Christians who may dispute the reality of climate change. Katherine says altering the status quo is easier than we think: the most important thing we can do to curb climate change is talk about it.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Climate change, it's like a red rag to a bull for many people, one of the most divisive
0:06.0	issues in American life. But this wasn't the case 20 years ago. So how did we get here?
0:17.6	This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davis.
0:22.5	And I'm Ashley Muntite. In this episode we look at how climate change became so polarizing
0:28.4	and how to make it easier to talk about. Our guest today says only when we're having real
0:33.9	conversations about what's going on with climate change, can we start to reverse its effects?
0:39.1	Climate scientist Catherine Hayho is chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. She's also the
0:45.2	author of a new book. It's called Saving Us, a climate scientist's case for hope and healing
0:52.0	in a divided world. And by the way, we're doing a book giveaway at the end of this show. So stay
0:57.8	tuned for that. Ashley, you kick us off with the first question.
1:02.5	You start the book with the line, I'm getting used to being hated. Why?
1:10.0	That really is at the foundation of our conversations about climate change today.
1:14.3	As a climate scientist, whenever I open my mouth outside the ivory tower,
1:18.5	it is rare for me not to be attacked for doing so. And so I understand whether anyone else
1:25.1	why we don't want to talk about climate change, but I also understand more than anyone else
1:30.4	why we need to be talking about climate change. So that's why I decided to open the book with that.
1:36.0	Now you live in Texas, which of course is oil country. Why do you say that's actually a great
1:42.6	place to be a climate scientist? It is the perfect place to be a climate scientist where I live
1:49.8	because of a few different reasons. So first of all, Texas is the most vulnerable state in the
1:56.6	whole United States to the impacts of climate change. Climate change is loading the weather dice
2:01.2	against us, making our hurricanes stronger, intensifying faster with a lot more rain.
2:06.8	It's making our droughts longer and stronger. Our heatways more intense, our heavy rainfall more
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.