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A Matter of Degrees

Give Up Your Climate Guilt

A Matter of Degrees

Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson

Government, Society & Culture

4.8533 Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The biggest climate stories blame "all of us," or cast solutions as "impossible." These narratives leave people feeling hopeless and confused about what we actually can do.

In our first episode: individual actions versus structural change. What's the right way to think about the role they each have in addressing the climate crisis? We'll explore the nuances and misperceptions. 


Leah and Katharine dig into their own personal histories and revelations. Plus, we'll hear from Bill McKibben about why plastic straws and lightbulbs do very little about the problem. And we'll hear from Dr. Shahzeen Attari about how individual behavior can have an impact on the climate crisis.

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A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio.

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right, Leah, so do you have your list?

0:02.8

Yeah, I brought it. Did you bring yours?

0:05.2

Yes, I did. All right, who's going to start?

0:09.4

You go first.

0:12.1

Okay, okay.

0:14.7

So when I was 16, I lived in the woods with 25 kids, and that's when I became vegetarian and I've been meat free for

0:26.3

more than two decades. Pretty impressive, Catherine. I think you got some real climate bona fides

0:31.8

here. Here's a good one. I did this research project once where we were trying to figure out

0:40.0

how much people were idling their cars on campus. And keep in mind, this was in Canada. And so it was

0:45.8

really cold and it was the winter and I would stand outside with a piece of paper and a notepad.

0:52.2

And it was so cold that if you had a pen, the ink wouldn't run.

0:56.0

So you had to use a pencil.

0:57.0

And what you would do is you would like note down how long people were idling their cars on campus.

1:02.0

Like, weren't they probably idling so they didn't freeze?

1:05.0

Yeah, I know. Okay. That's a good point.

1:08.0

Well, probably similar vibes when I was in undergrad.

1:14.8

I went professor by professor trying to convince them all to pledge to have paperless classrooms.

1:22.5

Yeah, I think we were all pretty zealous in undergrad.

1:25.6

Here's one.

1:26.3

Here's a more recent one, one that I still am doing that drives my husband rather nuts.

1:31.8

I tend to turn off the oven before things are actually done cooking because, you know,

1:38.7

I feel like residual heat, residual heat.

...

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