The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it | Katharine Hayhoe

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2020

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you talk to someone who doesn't believe in climate change? Not by rehashing the same data and facts we've been discussing for years, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. In this inspiring, pragmatic talk, Hayhoe shows how the key to having a real discussion is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion -- and to prompt people to realize that they already care about a changing climate. "We can't give in to despair," she says. "We have to go out and look for the hope we need to inspire us to act -- and that hope begins with a conversation, today."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily. This TED Talk features climate scientist
0:08.0	Catherine Hayho, recorded live at TED Women 2018. It was my first year as an atmospheric science
0:17.7	professor at Texas Tech University. We had just moved to Lubbock, Texas,
0:22.4	which had recently been named the second most conservative city in the entire United States.
0:28.3	A colleague asked me to guest teach his undergraduate geology class. I said, sure. But when I showed
0:34.8	up, the lecture hall was cavernous and dark. As I tracked the history of the carbon cycle through geologic time to present day,
0:42.3	most of the students were slumped over dozing or looking at their phones.
0:47.3	I ended my talk with a hopeful request for any questions,
0:51.3	and one hand shot up right away. I looked encouraging. He stood up,
0:57.0	and in a loud voice, he said, you're a Democrat, aren't you? No, I said, I'm Canadian.
1:05.8	Thank you. That was my baptism by fire into what has now become a sad fact of life here in the United States
1:20.9	and increasingly across Canada as well.
1:23.7	The fact that the number one predictor of whether we agree that climate is changing,
1:28.3	humans are responsible, and the impacts are increasingly serious and even dangerous,
1:33.3	has nothing to do with how much we know about science or even how smart we are,
1:38.3	but simply where we fall on the political spectrum.
1:42.3	Does a thermometer give us a different answer
1:45.4	depending on if we're liberal or conservative?
1:47.6	Of course not.
1:50.2	But if that thermometer tells us
1:52.6	that the planet is warming,
1:54.6	that humans are responsible,
	...

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