Connecting Faith and Science to Solve the Climate Crisis: Katharine Hayhoe

And in fact, Jesus even tells his disciples, you should be recognized by your love for others. And so I realized something that I now articulate when I speak to Christian groups. What is climate change other than a failure to love? To love God's creation and to love our sisters and our brothers.

Kate Tucker:  I'm Kate Tucker, and this is Hope is My Middle Name, a podcast from Consensus Digital Media. I am beyond excited to bring you this conversation with Katherine Hayhoe. Katherine is, among many, many things, an atmospheric scientist and a Christian. And she has devoted her life to helping people of all backgrounds and faiths better understand exactly what climate change is, how it affects them, and what they can do about it. But she does it in this way that is so unique and so thoughtful and so respectful because she knows how polarizing a topic it can be. I read Katherine's book, Saving Us, a Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. And in the book, she quotes St. Augustine saying, “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” In her book, in her work, in her life, Katherine invites all of us to walk in that courage to a place of real hope. 

Kate Tucker: Katherine, hello! Welcome! 

Katharine Hayhoe: Thank you!

Kate Tucker: Thanks so much for being here. I have been looking forward to this conversation for so long. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, how could I not? I mean, the name of your podcast is my favorite thing, so… 

Kate Tucker: Thank you! 

Kate Tucker: So what's going on in Texas today? How's it feeling? What's the weather like? 

Katharine Hayhoe: It is nice and sunny. We got a pretty good view of the eclipse. How about you? 

Kate Tucker: Oh, yes. I was up in Akron, Ohio, where I'm from, and it completely blew my mind. I mean, what's it like to see something like that and be probably the person in the room who completely gets it? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, interestingly, I was expecting to be not as wowed by it because I understand exactly what's happening. But I was actually surprised by what a strong sort of visceral response and even emotional response that I had, as well as others, to the eclipse. And you know, I have a watch and it told me to start a breathing exercise in the middle of totality because my heart rate had gone up so quickly.

Kate Tucker: Oh my gosh, seriously?! Wait, so it triggered that there was a shift in your body. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yeah. 

Kate Tucker: That is incredible. 

Katharine Hayhoe: The moment the moon slipped completely in front of the sun, everybody just… It was that awe inspiring!

Kate Tucker: Oh my gosh, yeah, it was like a portal to the universe opened and then also I just felt so small in, in the best of ways. Yeah. Wow. Well, I want to talk about your first experiences interacting with the natural world and finding that sense of awe and wonder, kind of like what we're talking about with the eclipse, going way back to your childhood. Where did you start to learn to fall in love with nature and with the outer world?

Katharine Hayhoe: So my dad was a science teacher. And that means that he is very convinced that science is the coolest, most amazing, most awesome thing you could possibly study. And he started on that at a very early age. So one of my very first memories is going to the park when I was probably just like three or four years old and it felt like it was two in the morning, but it was probably just nine o'clock at night, and lying on a blanket in the park, looking up at the sky with binoculars and him showing me how to find the Andromeda galaxy.

Kate Tucker: Oh, that's so beautiful.

Katharine Hayhoe: It's just amazing to think that from our planet, you can see out not just to other stars or other planets you can see across our own galaxy, we can see out to other galaxies! It's just absolutely mind blowing when you think about the scale of the universe and our place in it. 

Kate Tucker: It really is. So you're learning about all these scientific wonders by experiencing them with childlike wonder. How did you go from that experience of awe as a child into wanting to study the science behind it – astrophysics, astronomy, physics. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes. So science was part of my life. I mean, when I was, I think like two or three years old, my dad was teaching me binary notation. We had projects every summer to identify all the local native wildflowers. Our family vacations were often planned around astronomical events. Once I got to high school and I started to have a choice in what I could study, the math and the physics just really made sense to me.

And so when I went to university, studying physics and astronomy was one of the most interesting and one of the most clear paths before me. Like, when you really think about it, Who doesn't want to discover the secrets of the universe? Astronomy is one of the fields where you're almost guaranteed to make a discovery that no one has ever made before. And if that motivates you, then it's a pretty compelling field to go into. 

Kate Tucker: Another thing about discovering the secrets of the universe I want to talk about is the fact that you were being raised also in a faith environment. So you're also asking questions that maybe don't have answers necessarily, but we find our answers in faith and in God. Can you tell me a little bit about how you grew up in the faith? 

Katharine Hayhoe: So I was raised with the idea that as Christians, we believe that the Bible was inspired by and the universe was created by the same person, God, then how could they possibly be in conflict? And if they appear to be in conflict, it's because of our limited understanding, or in some cases our misunderstanding. It's not because of anything intrinsic to either the science that uncovers this incredible universe that we live in and this planet that we call our home, or the Bible, which as Christians, we believe is the inspired Word of God. So there's a verse in the book of Hebrews that says, “Faith is the evidence of what we do not see.” And I've often thought that if I could go back 2000 years and sort of jog the elbow of the person who was writing it, I would say, you forgot the second half of the verse. The second half is obviously, science is the evidence of what we do see. So I never saw the two as in conflict, but rather as complimentary more. 

Kate Tucker: I love that so much, and I feel like it really highlights the tension between the two, because you can see how if you framed it differently, there would be a lot of fear around that for people. However, I mean tell me, isn't it pretty basic that to science you would be constantly just throwing up your hands in the air at a certain point and be like, we just don't have the information to go any further at this point? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, in science, you want to get to that point because that's where the really interesting things are happening. And so it's not just the love of discovery, but I would say also curiosity is a very, very strong driver for scientists. And here's the thing. Okay. We're all curious, all of us. I mean, look at little children. Are they not the most curious people in the world? And so often, this is going beyond my own expertise, but often I've heard sometimes the way we're educated and the way we're raised, it almost drums the curiosity out of us. But to stay perpetually curious, there is always more to learn. 

Kate Tucker: So while you're in college learning away, you have this experience that kind of changes the trajectory of your life. Tell me about that. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yeah, so I was almost finished with my undergraduate degree in astrophysics, and I was already doing research on galaxies clustering around quasars, when I needed an extra class to finish my undergrad degree.

And this is a good argument for breadth requirements, because I'd already taken children's literature, I'd already taken the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, I had taken all these classes that interested me that were not science, but I needed one more class. And so I looked around and I saw this brand new class on climate change over in the geography department. I thought, well, that looks interesting. Why not take it?

So I took this class and I had already known that climate change is real, but I had always thought of it as an issue that mattered to people in the future. But in that class, I learned that first of all, climate change is no longer a future issue and this was some years ago. It was already happening now. It was already affecting real people and it was not only an environmental issue, which of course it is, but it's also a human issue. Climate change is taking issues like poverty and hunger, disease, lack of access to clean water, lack of access to basic education and a safe place to live, and making them worse.

Climate change is a profoundly human issue. And it turns out that the exact skill set that you need to do climate modeling is exactly what I have been getting through my education in physics and astronomy. So, when I learned that climate change was urgent, that climate change was a human issue, affecting all of us humans and every other living thing on this planet, and when I learned that I serendipitously had the exact skill set, you actually need to do something about this, I thought, well, it's so urgent, surely we'll fix it soon, and in the meantime, why don't I do everything I can to help, and then when we're done, I'll go back to studying galaxies. And that was a long time ago. 

Kate Tucker: Do you remember that day? Like, was it an instant sort of Eureka moment for you? Or did you weigh the possibilities and go and talk it over with some friends or parents or professors? Like, how did it actually work for you in that moment? 

Katharine Hayhoe: It was not an instant Eureka moment. It was definitely a very slow process. You know, I couldn't articulate it back then, but you might have seen this sort of image, figure of three interlocking circles of what we need to be doing with our life. And the first circle is what needs to be done. The second circle is what I'm good at. And then the third circle is what gives you joy. And where I believe each of us needs to be is right in the middle of the circle of what needs to be done, which is what I'm good at, with our unique talents and abilities and gifts, but also something that gives us joy because life is too short to spend time doing something that you absolutely hate or that just drags you down all the time. So I knew instinctively that I couldn't sign up to do this if I didn't have some of that curiosity and sense of wonder and sense of discovery in atmospheric science that I had already found in astrophysics. 

Kate Tucker: You are now officially an atmospheric scientist, is that correct? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes, my PhD is in atmospheric science, but I am a climate scientist as well because the climate system is made up of the atmosphere, the ocean, the biosphere, the cryosphere, that's all the ice and snow, and so any scientist who's trained in any of those disciplines is a climate scientist and then their subdiscipline is whatever part of the climate system they're an expert in.

Kate Tucker: Ooh, that's so helpful. Okay, so what does an atmospheric scientist do? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, what we do is we study the atmosphere. And that's not a simplification. That is what we do. And we study how the atmosphere interacts with all the different parts of the climate system. So how it interacts with the biosphere and the ocean and the cryosphere. And we also study, and this is a lot of what I do, we study how the atmosphere interacts with humans. So, what I specifically do within this field is I look at how well are we able to use basic physics to understand how the atmosphere works and to understand how humans are influencing the atmosphere primarily through our emissions of heat trapping gasses. We have understood since the 1850s. That is not a mistake. It is since the 1850s, so more than 170 years, we have understood that by digging up and burning coal and gas and oil, we are producing heat trapping gasses that are building up in the atmosphere, wrapping an extra blanket around our planet. Now, our planet already had the perfect blanket of natural heat trapping gasses that keeps us just the right temperature for life. Without this natural blanket, we would be a frozen ball of ice and you and I wouldn't be talking today and there'd be nobody around to listen to us either. But just like you would, if you're sleeping at night and you're the perfect temperature and someone sneaks into your room and puts an extra blanket on you, you start to heat up and then you eventually wake up and you're sweating and you're like, this is too hot. I didn't need this extra blanket. That's exactly what we're doing to our earth. 

Kate Tucker: Tell me how we would notice this. Like, I've heard you talk about global weirding. Is that what we're noticing? Is it just global weirding? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes. So, the reason why this is often referred to as global warming is because this extra blanket we're wrapping around the Earth is causing the average temperature of the planet to plummet, to tick upwards. But here's the thing. I mean, where you and I live, we could be like, well, it's cold outside today. Where's global warming now? Or we could be like, oh, well, it's a bit hotter than normal. This must be global warming. But mostly that's just weather.

And so what you and I experience is not global warming. Rather, I think increasingly, it's more like global weirding. Because wherever we live these days, The weather is just getting weird. I mean, we are seeing day after day way above what it's supposed to be in winter. We are seeing heat waves last longer and start earlier and be much more extreme than they used to in the summer. We're seeing wildfires, most of which are just the result of accidental human ignition, but once they ignite, we're seeing them burn greater and greater areas. I mean, I live in Texas now where we actually had the biggest wildfire on record earlier this winter. We're seeing hurricanes, which always happen naturally, get much stronger and much bigger and dump more rain because record warm ocean temperatures are fueling these giant storms. We're seeing heavy rainfall become more frequent because warmer air holds more water vapor. And so when a storm comes along, like it always does, there's more water vapor for the storm to pick up and dump on us than there was 50 or 100 years ago. So wherever we live, we're starting to feel like things are getting weirder. And a survey back last September showed that 9 out of 10 Americans around the U.S. had already been affected by extreme weather, and two thirds of them recognized that it probably had something to do with what humans were doing with climate change. 

Kate Tucker: So I want to talk about perceptions of climate change, but is there anything else that sort of sets the stakes here for us in lay terms? Like we're obviously having these extreme weather events and we can see that and we are looking at the ways that insurance companies are no longer insuring our homes and the ways that we're not even, we don't have the resources to rebuild and people are migrating. What else are we going to start to see if we don't fix this?

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, you're asking a very important question, which is essentially, you know, why does this matter? And it matters not because it's about saving the planet. The planet will be orbiting the sun long after we're gone. It's literally about saving us. And so that's why when I wrote a book, I called it Saving Us because that's what this is about! And by us, I want to be clear, I mean human civilization, and I mean many of the other species that share this planet with us. As far back as we can go in the paleoclimate history of this planet, we know the planet has been warmer or cooler before. But, we also know that the climate has never changed this quickly. We know that when it has changed this quickly in the past, it's only done so a handful of times, and each of those handful of times had a label. And that label was extinction, which is not a good thing. 

Kate Tucker: We don't want that label. 

Katharine Hayhoe: No, we do not want that label. And then we also know that the climate has never changed as quickly when we had 8 billion people on the planet. And so all of our infrastructure, our water, our food systems, our homes, even our geopolitical boundaries, where we've located our cities, it's all predicated on the climate of the past. rather than the future. So what's at risk here is not the planet. What's at risk here is our food, our water, our homes, our economy, many of the species in the nature that surround us on which our life depends. Nature doesn't need us. We need it. I mean, half the oxygen we breathe comes from tiny phytoplankton and seaweed and the ocean, for goodness sakes. So, we can't survive without nature. So that's what's at stake. 

And how are we seeing this affect us? Well, it's already affecting our health. Just burning fossil fuels, coal and gas and oil, produces air pollution that causes millions of deaths every single year. And then as climate changes, as sea level rises, as these weather extremes are becoming more severe, we are seeing shortages in crops. The UK, for example, is facing, potentially record low food production this year. We are seeing water shortages. I read again and again about how major cities are experiencing water shortages. And then on the other hand, then they might be flooding on the other side because climate change is actually making both sides worse.

You mentioned insurance, and that is definitely something that we're seeing happening today. So back a few months ago, I was chairing a panel that had people from the investment industry, it had economists, it had the head of the United Nations Environmental Protection Agency on it, and then it also had the head of a big reinsurance group on it. And so I asked each of the panelists, do you feel like we're adapting quickly enough to the changes that we're seeing in climate? And going down the panel, everybody said no, absolutely not. And then I got to the head of the reinsurance company and he said, Oh yes, in my industry, we are. I said, well, tell me more. How are you doing that? And he said, well, we just price insurance from year to year. And so if we can't afford to offer insurance in a given location anymore, we just pull out. And I read the headlines this morning. A major insurer just pulled out of some very nice neighborhoods in California, including Pacific Palisades and Bel Air, citing wildfire risk from climate change as the reason they couldn't afford to offer insurance there anymore.

But it's not even just about pulling out. I was talking to one of my colleagues in Southern Florida, which is very at risk from sea level rise and from hurricanes, and she said, the insurance on her home last year went from 2,000 to 5,000. And in some parts of Texas and Louisiana, you can't get insurance anymore either. And so average homeowners who require insurance to get a mortgage are being priced out of home ownership, which highlights something that's very important to me. And this is a huge part of why I became a climate scientist. Climate change affects us all. But it doesn't affect us all equally. And people who are already impoverished, or people who are just simply not extremely wealthy, are much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than people who can afford to buy insurance or rebuild if something destroys their home.

People who can afford ample food for their family are much less at risk than the small, you know, shareholder farmer who, if his crop fails, he can't feed his family. And this is why I care so passionately about it, because. It affects us all, but it doesn't affect us all equally, and it is not fair. 

Kate Tucker: Yeah. So I want to go back to your journey. You become this atmospheric scientists, you moved to Lubbock, Texas in 2005 with your husband, who's also a pastor and you start teaching at Texas Tech. You realize there that climate change and all of this information that you have, everything you just talked about is actually something that's very divisive.

Tell me the story, if you would, for our listeners of the day that really hit home for you in Texas. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, going in, I really had no idea what I was walking into, and it didn't take too long to figure out after I arrived there that I was the only climate scientist within a 200 mile radius. There was nobody else. But here's the interesting thing. Within just a few months of arriving at Texas Tech, I got my first invitation to speak to a group, it was a women's group, of people who were curious about this issue. Now before that, I was aware the penny had dropped after a year or two in graduate school in Illinois. The penny had dropped that there were a number of people who were not on board with the idea that this thing was real. And very sadly, I discovered many of those people were the same people who I went to church with in Illinois. Not all, but some. And so I already realized that this was a divisive issue, but I sort of thought of it, as many of us still do, as sort of a black and white issue.You know, there's either believers or deniers, and you pick a camp, and never the twain shall meet.

But when I was invited to speak to these women, I mean, I felt then, and I still feel today, that climate change affects all of us, and so we all need to know about it. I wasn't going to say no, so I said sure. So I put together my best attempt at explaining the science, and I went and I talked science, science, science, science. But then, I listened very carefully to the questions I got. And the questions I got were, how do you know that it's not a natural factor, like a natural cycle or the sun, or how do you know that it's not, you know, volcanoes, or how sure are you scientists about this? I mean, you haven't been studying it that long, have you? So I listened very carefully to these questions because I feel like that's what people really wanted to hear from me. Those are the things they actually wanted to know. And I went back and I revised my slides to talk about, well, how do we know that it's actually humans and how long have we known that?

And in some cases, I didn't even know the answer myself. I had to do the research to find out that the 1850s was when we were first figuring this out, and that blew my mind when I found that out. And we're still making discoveries today, because we knew about a lot of the male scientists who had done that research back in the 1850s, but it turned out there were actually women doing the research too, and in some cases women were even publishing scientific papers about it, like Mrs. Eunice Foote published a paper that said, back in 1856, that if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were higher, the planet would be warmer. 

Kate Tucker: Oh my gosh. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Is that not just absolutely mind blowing? 

Kate Tucker: It's so cool. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes. So I did all this research and then one of the women who had been at that women's group was part of a book club. So she said, well, you know, we had a speaker who was pretty interesting. Why doesn't she come speak to the book club? And pretty soon there was somebody there who worked at the senior citizens home. So then I went and gave a talk there. Within just a few times, I got to the point where people weren't asking questions about the science anymore.

They started to ask questions about, well, why does it matter? I mean, you're talking about ice sheets, and Greenland, and polar bears, and sea level rise, and we're living here in Lubbock, Texas. Why does it matter to us? So then I had to answer those questions. I had to figure out, okay, well, what's happening in Texas? How does that affect people's homes, or their crops, or things that matter to us? And it was really interesting because the closer I started to get towards the things that actually mattered to people, the more people actually started to engage and be like, Oh, okay, this isn't just a scientific curiosity. Now I understand it actually might affect me.

And so for me, another inflection point, so to speak, came where after the book club and after the senior citizens home, and after a couple of other invitations, I was invited to speak at Second Baptist Church. When they invited me, they didn't know that I was a Christian, because I had sort of bought into the whole this is what I do, you know, for my job, and then this is what I do on Sundays, and never the twain shall meet again, but here's the thing, I mean, the reason why I became a climate scientist was because when I found out that climate change affects us all, but it doesn't affect us all equally, and when I found out that the people who had done the least to contribute to the problem were the ones who were bearing the brunt of the impacts that really spoke to me, not only as a human, as it speaks to us all, but specifically as a person of faith, because we're told that we are to love others and to care for others. And in fact, Jesus even tells his disciples, you should be recognized by your love for others. And so I realized something that I now articulate when I speak to Christian groups, what is climate change, other than a failure to love, to love God's creation and to love our sisters and our brothers.

Kate Tucker: So you end up at this Wednesday night meeting, which I'm fascinated by the fact that somebody decided to have a scientist there when they didn't know you were actually also a believer, a Christian. That's really interesting, right?

Katharine Hayhoe: It is, and let me just divert for a second to say that I really love the fact that the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is of course an organization of national scientists, they have a program called the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, and one of the projects that that dialogue has is called Scientists in Sanctuaries, where they support scientists giving talks at churches and they support bringing pastors and ministers and priests into scientific labs to talk with science groups there. So, although they often appear to be oil and water, I don't think they are. And in fact, I think they can not only coexist, but they can reinforce each other. And in my case, I feel like because of what I believe, that's why I became a climate scientist.

So I thought, well, here I am speaking at this church. I really feel like it's time to tell people why I care, because I think that they might share the same concerns too. They'll recognize the same Bible verses that, you know, inform my perspective, and maybe they might feel the same way too. But I was nervous because talking about your faith in public, if you're a scientist or if you're just anybody in a secular world, it's not really done. Like, it's not, it sort of almost feels like you're almost undressing in public, so to speak. I prepared a very different set of slides. I included all the information about why do we know it's humans? How does it matter to us here in Texas? But for the first time, I actually included some of the Bible verses that guide my perspective, like in Genesis, where it says that God created humans in his image so that we would have responsibility over every living thing on this planet. And that same Hebrew word, radah, is used elsewhere to talk about how when God uses that word, it is to care for the needy and to listen to the cries of the suffering. That is what that word means. And then I also spoke about how in Revelation it says God will destroy those who destroy the earth, and how all through the New Testament, we're told to love and care for others, and all through the Old Testament, there's verses about God's love and care for the most seemingly insignificant aspects of nature, like the lilies of the field.

So, I put this all together, and I very nervously started in, and I was sort of almost expecting people to laugh, or get angry, or, I wasn't quite sure how they would react. But, instead, what I saw is I saw people sort of leaning forward and people listening even more intently. And the questions I got at the end were even more personal and more meaningful. And I recognized that the more deeply we can connect everything we know in our head, so to speak, with what we care about in our hearts, the more effective it is at motivating us to care about this issue and to want to do something about it. 

Kate Tucker: It's so powerful. I mean like from there, did you feel something shift in your purpose or, I don't know if I should use the word calling, but just in the work you were doing in the world, that suddenly you were not just working to save us, save the planet, but that you also now had this heart mission.

Katharine Hayhoe: Yeah. I wouldn't have called it a calling then, but I think I would call it a calling now. Yeah, because what's at risk, again, is what we think of as all of God's creation, including us on this planet. And The Bible is very clear that you can't just sort of hand somebody a Bible and say, bless you, my son, go in peace. If people are hungry, we need to figure out how to give them food. If they need water, we need to figure out how to give them something to drink. And that is a metaphor, but sadly due to climate change, it is also a physical reality these days with climate change affecting the price and availability of food, the availability and quality of water.

We've created a world that is polluted. We've created a world that is facing a rapidly growing biodiversity crisis. We've created a world now that is facing the climate crisis, and all of these crises are the result of our wasteful and irresponsible use of the resources that I believe God has given us, the resources this planet contains. But on the flip side, the good news is that if we created them, it means we can fix them. And so I talked earlier about connecting our head to our heart, but there's one more essential connection that we need to make, and this is so much of what I do and I talk about today. We have to connect our heart to our hands.

We have to figure out how to empower people to act, because today most people are worried about climate change, but in the US, 50 percent of people feel hopeless and helpless and don't know where to start when it comes to doing something about it. And so, instead of being filled with hope, our hearts often, when we start to realize what's really happening, our hearts are filled with grief. They're filled with sadness. I ask people regularly, how do you feel about climate change? And the answers I get are sad, depressed, anxious, paralyzed, frustrated, angry. And if we don't connect why we care to what we can do about it, we'll remain in that place and nothing will get done. In fact, some people have gotten so depressed about this that they've wrapped right around and they've teamed up with people who reject the reality of climate change to say, there's nothing we can do about it. Stop doing anything about it. It's too late. There's nothing we can do. I run into those people on social media every single day. And here's the thing, if we're convinced there's nothing we can do because we're overwhelmed by the crisis, or if we're convinced there's nothing we can do because we don't want to fix it, either way the result is the same, we won't fix it.

And so that's why that second step, connecting our heart to our hands, and why bringing in the name of your podcast, Hope, is so important, because without that vision of what the future could be if we act, we won't. And if we don't, we are doomed.

Kate Tucker: You have an approach, a sort of strategy, a three step approach to talking with people who might disagree with you about climate science and climate change. Could you go through these steps for us? They seem simple, but I think that it's a pretty profound sort of shift in the way we might approach it.

Katharine Hayhoe: First of all, begin with something that we have in common and we share rather than something that divides us. And as I talk about in the book, Saving Us. I've begun conversations with the fact that I really love chocolate, I am a fan of beach vacations, I've even started conversations with the fact that I knit, and the person I'm talking to knits.

So begin with something we have in common, and if you don't know what that is, that's a signal that you need to learn more about the other person and ask questions and listen to what they say rather than immediately jumping into what you have to say. Sarah Peach is an environmental journalist and she said something really profound. She says the goal of the conversation is not to talk to other people but to bring other people into it. And that means it has to be two ways.

So begin with something you have in common. I call that bonding. And then connect the dots to why, because of what you both care about, climate change matters to you. Connect the dots. If you both love beach vacations, well, you know, those beaches are getting smaller and smaller and they're having to be replenished more and more. If you care about your kids, well, here's how climate change is affecting our kids' health today and their future tomorrow. But then, don't end there.

You've made the head to heart connection, but there's one more connection to make. the heart to hands. Always, always inspire with information about positive solutions it could be that other people are already doing, or that could be done, or that you're doing yourself, or that an organization you're part of is doing.

What the social science tells us is that the doom-and-gloom-filled stories, that are totally true to be very clear about the ice sheets melting and the sea level rising and the ocean currents slowing, those doom-filled stories get a lot of clicks and shares on social media, but they are the absolute worst, scientists have found, for actually inspiring people to do something.

Instead, what inspires people to do something is recognizing that the giant boulder of climate action is not sitting at the bottom of an impossibly steep cliff with only a few hands on it. We feel like, well, if I add my hand, it's not going to do anything anyway, so why bother? So through our conversations, we can directly tackle this myth head on, which is potentially the most insidious myth that the greatest number of people have bought into, that nothing's happening.

When we share, what cities are doing, what states and provinces are doing, what entire countries are doing, when we talk about what companies are doing, not just the Patagonias of the world, but the Walmarts and the Googles and the Microsofts of the world, when we share what churches are doing, what universities and schools and colleges are doing, what young people are doing, what senior citizens are doing… 

Even when we talk about ourselves, that, you know, I love the fact that our electricity bill is now powered by wind rather than by fossil fuels. I love the fact that in Texas, we're hitting 80 percent wind and solar energy on our power grid on the weekends these days. And saving taxpayers and power payers millions of dollars. And when we share this with people, we realize that the giant boulder is not at the bottom of the cliff with only a few hands on it. It is already at the top of the hill. It is rolling down the hill in the right direction. It has millions of hands on it, many of whom you would never imagine were there. And if I add my hand and if I use my voice to encourage the people I live around, the people I work with, the people I worship with, the people I study with to add theirs, it will go faster.

Not only do I share all kinds of stories like this in Saving Us, but two years ago I decided I was going to start a newsletter that practiced exactly this head to heart to hands connection. So every week I have a free newsletter called Talking Climate, and at the top it shares good news in green. Good news of what people, organizations are doing right now to make a difference.

And when I started doing that, I was worried two years ago. I was like, well, you know, I'm committing to do this every week, but what if I run out of good news? What am I going to do? 

Kate Tucker: Yeah, I was gonna ask you, that's quite a resource and quite a commitment!

Katharine Hayhoe: Well, here I am, two years on, and there is so much good news when I go out and I look for it and I hunt it down, I am cheating. I am shoving two or three or even four pieces of good news into every single newsletter. 

Kate Tucker: Oof, I gotta get on that newsletter list. That's amazing. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Please do. It's called Talking Climate and the first section is green, good news. But then after that, I have a section in red called not so good news that doesn't talk about the ice sheets or the polar bears. It talks about chocolate and bananas and coffee. It talks about outdoor sports and our kids' health. It talks about things that matter to you and I in our lives, that we can identify with and be like, Oh, so that's why my insurance rates just went up. But then at the end, I have a third section, which is the hands. And the third section is in blue, what can I do? And every week I have something tangible that each of us can do. And then we can catalyze and magnify and make it contagious by sharing what we're doing and sharing everything we've learned with people around us every single week. 

Kate Tucker: Oh, I love it so much.You are in maybe the second most conservative city in the nation, Lubbock, Texas. What is the conversation like for you there? Are there some stories you could share where you're talking with Texans? What's their perspectives and how has that gone using this strategy? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes. So one study showed that based on who votes for what, Lubbock, Texas was the second most conservative city in the US. And in fact, when there's an election, there's a Republican candidate, and then there is a conservative Republican candidate who talks all about how the Republican candidate is loose as a goose and just a tool of the man, so to speak, paraphrasing. I was invited to speak to a very large women's group just a few years ago.

I thought, well, a lot of people here have lived here a long time, so I decided to go around and ask people to share stories of the wildest weather they'd ever had because 10 years ago Lubbock, Texas went up against Caribou, Maine, Fargo, North Dakota, and Fairbanks, Alaska and won the Weather Channel's competition for the wildest weather in the country.

Kate Tucker: You're kidding.

Katharine Hayhoe:  Yeah. So I asked women going around to tell me stories, and they had incredible stories of dust storms from the 1950s, so severe that the sky would be black and dust would be piled a foot or two high up outside their doors when they tried to open them. We heard stories of hail storms and tornadoes and lightning. I then asked them, all right, do you feel that things are changing? Do you feel like our weather's getting weirder? And many of them said yes. So then, that gave me a perfect lead in to explain why it was happening and how it was affecting us, but I didn't stop there. We had bonding and connecting. Last step is to inspire.

Then I started talking about the fact that West Texas is a leader in clean energy. That I've calculated that if we just took, you know, about a hundred by a hundred square mile area in West Texas and covered it in solar panels alone, that would be enough to supply the entire United States with electricity. Now, of course, you don't want to put it all in one place, but the point is, we have the area, we have the resources, we have the 330 sunny days a year, and we have the wind. And many landowners lease their land out, they don't farm it themselves. And many have leased it out for oil, but if they lease it out for oil, the companies have to drive on and off their land all the time to collect the oil. So increasingly, farmers and landowners are leasing it out to not just people who will produce cotton off it, but also people who will produce wind.

So when I started to explain this, this woman immediately spoke up. And she was, oh, this amazing woman. She was just, you know, ramrod straight, almost in her nineties, had lived there all her life and inherited her land from her family, who had in turn inherited it from their family. She piped up and she said, yes! She said, I'm getting my wind turbines this month. And me and my neighbor, Maggie, we're going to make sandwiches and take our folding stools and go out and sit there, you know, and watch them put those up. And to me, that joy and the excitement and enthusiasm in her voice, because those wind turbines were going to be able to pay for her grandchildren's education, that to me embodied the power of change and the power of hope in the second most conservative city in the country.

Kate Tucker: I love it. I mean, who better to lead us in the energy revolution in the States than Texas? I mean, y'all are so big and you are sitting right there on, what is it, the Permian Basin. You have giant oil and gas fields. It just totally makes sense that you would also lead the energy transition. That's amazing.

Katharine Hayhoe: It is. It's so encouraging because here in Texas, I had an edition of my newsletter on Texas a couple months ago. And when I started to look for good news in Texas, we had so much that I actually took the unprecedented step of having a newsletter that had good news, more good news, and what you can do about it. Now, at the very beginning, just to be clear, I did state that Texas is the most vulnerable state in the US to billion dollar weather and climate disasters that are being supersized by climate change. It is number one. So Texas is the most vulnerable, but it isn't only about wind energy. When I moved here almost 20 years ago, Texas wasn't even top 10 in solar. And now this past year, it passed California for the most installed utility scale solar in the country. But there's all kinds of battery technology being pioneered here. And then there's all kinds of other techniques like green infrastructure to work with nature to help us build resilience to climate impacts. There's so much happening in Texas, and I really believe if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere. 

But some people may be wondering, where's the number one most conservative city in America? It is Provo, Utah, where Brigham Young University is located. And last year, I was invited to give a campus-wide talk. And when I showed up there, I met a group of staff and students from the sustainability office. They said, we know that you think the most important thing we can do is talk about it. So back in September, when we knew you were coming to speak in November, we got together and we thought, well, what if we could have a thousand conversations about climate change, about why it matters and what we could do about it before Katherine comes to speak. Do you think we could do that? The sustainability staff asked the students, and the students said, No, I think we could have 10,000! So they set up a GIS app where people could enter where they had the conversation. And by the time I showed up in November, they had had over 35,000 conversations on every inhabited continent in the world! And now they're well past, I think they're past 50,000 and they've added Antarctica to it, having these conversations all over the world about why it matters and what they can do. 

Kate Tucker: That is so hopeful!

Katharine Hayhoe: In the most conservative city in the country! 

Kate Tucker: Yeah, look what you've inspired! But I want to acknowledge the fact that part of the reason people aren't having the conversations is because it's a lot of heavy lifting. It's a lot of emotional energy, as you well know. And it's interesting to me that you have taken up that mantle and been willing to put yourself out there. You know, are there days where it feels like, ugh, what did I get myself into? And like, how do you deal with human feelings of overwhelm?

Katharine Hayhoe: Oh my goodness, yes. I definitely get overwhelmed because, as you know, I'm talking about this all the time, and on social media, especially, there's a lot of overwhelm. I've been giving about a hundred presentations a year for the last few years, most of them virtual. The last year or two, I scaled back to 50. But that's still a lot of conversations to have.

Kate Tucker: Oh my gosh. That's so much. And you're still being a scientist.

Katharine Hayhoe: I am. And I should say, I'm a scientist at a university. I'm still at Texas Tech, but I'm also Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy now, which is the world's largest conservation organization that's tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis in 80 different countries around the world. So that's a lot. Um, yeah, we all get overwhelmed. And I have increasingly become convinced the last year or two, and this is something really, really important to sort of share and internalize. I've become convinced that self care is an important aspect of climate action. Because why am I fighting so hard? I am fighting because of the people, the places, and things I love. So if in my fight, I neglect to spend time with the people in the places I love and doing the things I love, then it's like our tank is running on empty. You know, for me, getting out on the lake with my paddleboard or my electric eFoil, spending time knitting or reading, you know, just visiting, sitting around on the porch with my friends and my cousins and my family, doing the things I love with the people I love. That's why I'm in this. 

Kate Tucker: What's one thing you've learned through all of this? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Every conversation I have, I feel like I'm still learning how to better connect, how to better make that head to heart to hands connection. And to do that, I've learned to look to history because this is not the first time that we have needed a massive societal change to fix a problem that humans have created. So if we look back in history, we have confronted horrible situations of our own manufacturing. The slave trade, apartheid, civil rights, women not having the vote. And I have a colleague who's a historian, his name is John Francois Muhol, and he's actually studied the letters to the editors in the news articles that people would write back in the 1800s, arguing in favor of slavery. And he has compared the language and the metaphors and the words they use to the same words that people use today to justify our continued dependence on fossil fuels. You know, the economy needs it. If we take this away, it will destroy the economy. Um, it's not so bad, you know, and people argue today CO2 is plant food, or it's not so bad that millions of people are dying from air pollution every year from burning fossil fuels, or that black and brown communities in the US are bearing the brunt of the impacts of climate change, not to mention what's happening in countries on the other side of the world. People use the same arguments.

And so I take heart from realizing that. Humans are humans, and we have this terrible tendency to just charge ahead and create these horrible, injust, inequitable, harmful situations at the same time there are people at that time who recognized how horrible and harmful and unjust they were. And those people, for example, let's think about the abolitionists back in the United Kingdom before it even came to the US. Those abolitionists boycotted sugar and they boycotted cotton, because those were two products that came from plantations primarily in the Caribbean and the southern US. Was boycotting cotton and sugar what led to the abolition of slavery? No, they were making those changes to be consistent with who they were, as each of us can make changes to be consistent with who we are too when it comes to climate change and our personal carbon footprint. But what those people did is they used their voices to advocate for change.

And so what that made me realize is we stand in the shadow of so many people who have gone before us, who fought and argued and advocated for change year after year, decade after decade, being defeated, being pushed down, being trolled, as we would say today, and often feeling overwhelmed and discouraged and hopeless, but they did not give in.

They were convinced that a better future was possible. They were convinced that we can do something today to increase the probability of that better future. And that, to me, is the definition of hope. It's not saying everything will be okay, because if we don't do anything, it won't. But recognizing that a better future is possible and that there's something we can do to materially alter the probability of that better future coming true and using that as that small bright light at the end of the dark tunnel that we're in to continue to not only move ourselves, but to bring others along with us moving towards that possible light. And we know from what has been accomplished in history that we can reach that light.

And because of that, our lives are forever changed. The fact that you and I can vote because of those women who chain themselves to fences, the fact that people can sit wherever they want on the bus because of amazing people like Rosa Parks, but many other people whose names we don't know. Society has changed before, and when it did, it was not because of presidents or prime ministers or CEOs or big, rich, wealthy, famous people. It was because of ordinary, average people who had the courage of their convictions and used their voices to call for change. And what inspires me is the fact that we are those people. We did it before, and that means we can do it again. That, to me, is the definition of hope. 

Kate Tucker: Katherine, my goodness, I have so much hope after this conversation. What about you? What's giving you reasons to hope these days?

Katharine Hayhoe: What gives me hope every day is when I just see one person making a difference, whether it's an eight year old who started a podcast to talk about climate change, or whether it's the senior citizens in Switzerland taking their country to the Human Rights Court to demand more climate action. I see hope all around me once I go out and look for it, and that's what each of us can do. We can go out and look for that hope, and if you do, I promise you, you'll find it. 

Kate Tucker: Is your middle name Hope? 

Katharine Hayhoe: Yes, it definitely is. 

Kate Tucker: Thank you. Thank you for being here. 

Katharine Hayhoe: Thank you for having me.

Kate Tucker: Thank you so, so much to Katherine Hayhoe for her vital work in climate science and for her tireless efforts to communicate that science in a way that inspires action, healing, and hope. Sign up for her newsletter, Talking Climate, at katherinehayhoe.com and you can learn the good news, the not so good news, and the real tangible things you can do to help save all of us. Find those links and more at hopeismymiddlename. com. 

Hope is My Middle Name is hosted and executive produced by me, Kate Tucker. You can find me on YouTube and on Instagram @KateTuckerMusic. And if there's someone you think belongs on the show, send me a message. Hope Is My Middle Name can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening.

It would mean a whole, whole, whole lot to us if you would follow the show on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. We love hearing from you. And if you're still listening, copy the link to this episode and text it to a friend. That actually makes a huge difference in helping us reach more people with more hope.

Hope is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media, produced in association with Reasonable Volume. This episode was produced by Christine Fennessy with editing from Rachel Swaby. Our production coordinator is Percia Verlin. Sound design and engineering by Mark Bush. Music by the fantastic artists at Epidemic Sound, Soundstripe, and me.

Big thanks to Conor Gaughan, our publisher and fearless leader at Consensus Digital Media. And thank you so, so much for listening. See you next time!