I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, September 23rd.

We're very happy to have with us now, one of the world's leading climate scientists, who is also one of the world's leading climate

communicators across ideological lines. Catherine Hayho is chief scientist with the Nature Conservancy.

She's an atmospheric scientist by training. Across various divides, she is a Canadian,

who now lives in Texas, and she is an evangelical Christian.

And Catherine Hayho has a new book called Saving Us, a climate scientist's case for hope and healing in a divided world.

It's interesting, too, in the context of the global climate talks taking place at the UN General Assembly this week

and the UN's Climate Summit coming up in a few weeks. Dr. Hayhill, thanks for coming on. Welcome to

WNYC. Thank you so much for having me. Let me just jump right in on one premise of your book,

that to talk across political lines on the issue of climate change,

it's better to focus on shared values and other common ground. Are there shared values when it

comes to the politics of climate change and the audiences that disagree on it? On the politics

there might not be, but on the fact that we are all humans there definitely are.

So we can connect over the fact that we're both parents and we want a better future for our kids.

We might connect over the fact that we want a healthy economy where we can get jobs.

We want a safe place to live. We might really enjoy something like tennis or jogging or I've even started conversations over knitting or wine. The Rotary Club, the Lions Club, a shared faith, or sometimes even politics. Because questions of energy independence and free market climate solutions, those are there, and they can be very powerful in motivating

people when the issue is reframed to align with their values as opposed to counter to their values,

which so often it is today.

For people in our New York listening area, for example, who may have a certain starting point

on what they think about evangelical Christians

or what they think they think. Can you talk about your own evangelical Christianity and how it's

consistent with being an evangelist for taking climate change seriously? Yes. I'm originally from

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