Now Is the Time to Freak Out
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2019
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our guest today is David Wallace Wells, a deputy editor at New York Magazine, and author of a vividly distressing new book about the all-encompassing perils of climate change, called The Uninhabitable Earth. With every full-throated warning, on page after page, Wallace Wells fully embraces the notion that eloquently targeted fear can shake the public into action. He also presents a gripping argument that scientists, and others charged with sounding the alarm, have historically been far too timid, for fear of being branded "alarmist" or dismissed as leftist. Now is the time to panic, Wallace Wells argues. In fact, that moment passed long ago. So now what? Host Jamilah King helps listeners locate some moments of hope and optimism amid the fear.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:04.0 | On today's show, it's time. |
| 0:12.0 | On today's show, it's time to freak the hell out. |
| 0:15.0 | Seriously, full panic mode people. |
| 0:19.0 | We'll explain what I mean in just a moment. Stick around. |
| 0:24.0 | I want to let you in on a little secret. |
| 0:35.0 | It's something we're maybe not especially proud of, but here goes. |
| 0:41.0 | Sometimes at Mother Jones, when we write a story about climate change, we try to keep the words |
| 0:45.9 | climate change out of the headline when you're looking through social media. |
| 0:50.2 | The reason is simple. |
| 0:51.8 | Sometimes not all the time, but sometimes for sure, we fear will simply turn you off and you won't read the story. |
| 1:01.0 | It's not because we don't trust you. In fact, it's quite the opposite. We know you care about climate change, and you care about it a lot. |
| 1:09.0 | You're worried about your kids growing up in a world beset by climate wars and possible heat and fires and |
| 1:15.1 | drought you're worried about policy and solutions and who to vote for to make this |
| 1:19.5 | better but we're also worried that you're totally utterly completely fatigued by the |
| 1:25.7 | relentless onslaught of negativity. You're tired. Maybe that tiredness will make you |
| 1:31.8 | skate on by our story, not wanting to engage with yet another horror. |
| 1:36.0 | Our guest today wants you to challenge this idea. |
| 1:39.0 | He says it's time to freak out. |
| 1:42.0 | David Wallace Wells is a columnist in Des Moines. says it's time to freak out. |
| 1:43.1 | David Wallace Wells is a columnist and deputy editor |
| 1:45.7 | at New York magazine and the author of the uninhabitable |
... |
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