Themes: climate communication, owning our stories, leadership, behavioral change, radical honesty
Most times, when I hear someone talk about climate change, I come away feeling disengaged and disempowered. For me, these conversations leave me feeling guilty, fearful, gaslit, and manipulated. The irony is, I talk with others in the exact same way. The way we talk about climate change is toxic.
Join me this week as I explore my thoughts on how we can become better leaders through radical honesty and owning our climate stories.
Discover:
- Why climate conversations can be toxic
- Why using science as a motivator for change is a fundamentally flawed approach
- The reasons we do need science in our life
Links:
Here is a link to the Pew research study discussed in this episode.
I would love to hear back from you. Reach out to me on my Ig (link) and tell me your thoughts!
Welcome to the disobedient scientist podcast. I'm Patty Martin. Every week, this podcast explores how to have an effective climate conversation, that motivates change, inspires, and allows us to live with grounded optimism.
This podcast encourages us to fully own our climate stories so we can begin building something new.
Who we are is how we lead. We are not helpless around climate change. We have a choice to do this stuff. We can choose resiliency over disengagement, courage over comfort.
I am so excited you have decided to join me here. Welcome.
Hey, hey, hey everyone. What is up, so today I wanted to start with a Brene` Brown quote from Dare to Lead .
"When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. When we don't own our stories of failure, setbacks, and hurt, they own us."
So this quote really sets the stage for what I want to talk about today. And today I want to talk about climate change. I want to talk about our collective climate story. I want to talk about what we need to own and what we are hiding from.
This is the sad truth, most climate conversations that I have, and that I observe ,feel toxic and hurtful.
If I really observe how I feel when I am in a climate conversation, the truth is, is I feel like $hit.
I feel guilty- that I'm not doing enough.
I'm fearful-like that the world is going to boil around me.
I feel small. I feel disempowered- like nothing I do can actually make a difference.
I feel like I'm constantly getting gas lit that my experience is not actually acknowledged or discussed in climate solutions.
And overall. My overarching feeling is that I am being manipulated.
And I know I'm not alone in this. This is a common experience.
The truth is climate action should be a lens through which we should be filtering our lives. When I go to the grocery store, when I go on vacation, when I buy that thing off of Amazon.
All of these things, we should be thinking about how our actions are impacting the world around us. But if I am feeling guilty, shameful, disempowered, freaking manipulated, climate solutions become very painful.
I don't want to feel these things, like, straight up. I will do pretty much anything I can to avoid them. I'll be that ostrich with its head in the sand. I will disengage, and this is why I have disengaged from climate conversations. And, you know, what's even worse. I avoid initiating climate conversations with other people because I don't want others. I don't want to make others feel the way I feel when I have these conversations. So I'm just perpetuating the sense of disengagement.
Think about it in terms of a relationship. If you were like my best friend and I come to you and I'm like, Hey, you know, that person I've been dating. Actually, when I'm in conversation with them, they kind of make me feel afraid. Like, I definitely feel like I have to give up everything that is meaningful in my life. I don't feel like my side is being considered. And you know what, they freakin manipulate me. Like if I told you that this was a relationship I was in, you'd be like, yo, girl, This is toxic. Get the fuck out!
The way we talk about climate change feels toxic. And I think that the number one problem we are facing is this that it's toxic and nobody wants to engage.
Don't get me wrong, I am freaking guilty. I create climate toxic climate conversations all the time. Like I catch myself all the time, catastrophizing, using fear to get people to into action. And I definitely use science as a means to gain power and authority in conversations. The irony is. I feel manipulated by people, but I don't know how to have a different conversation or I don't have know a different way to talk about this.
So I then turn around and manipulate people in the exact same way I hate being talked to. It's this idea that hurt people, hurt people. And this cycle continues until we decide not.
I recognize I'm part of this problem. And I am spending a lot of my time trying to figure out how to do this different. How can we have better climate conversations, where we walk away, feeling optimistic and hopeful, resilient, inspired, empowered, overall? How can we have conversations where we leave feeling engaged and connected to the world around? We can have climate hope and still be grounded in reality.
The truth that I have found around all of this, and it goes against everything I know of as a scientist. I love to think that I am a logical person who uses critical thinking and logic to get from A, to B, to C, to D, to have linear thinking.
Like, I love to think that I am that yet the hard reality is- we are not logical. We are emotional creatures that sometimes like just sometimes can be a little bit logical and it is neither logic nor science that persuades us into action.
So here's a great example of this. I got my PhD in immunology, right? I am literally, I'm a doctor that studies disease. Additionally, I have alcoholism and heart disease, diabetes in my family. I am asthmatic, I am definitely predisposed to get illness, get sick some time in my life.
And while I am studying all about how to save people from infection and disease, I spent years of my life drinking, smoking, and eating like crap, like every single day.
I knew my habits and lifestyle were leading me in a direction that could cause disease. And yet I still did it.
As compelling as the science was, even though I love science, like it has a huge place in my heart. But even with that, even with my love of science, it did not stop me. It did not change my actions.
And in this same way, we are using science and facts to motivate people towards climate action. And it's just straight up not working. It is not effective at all. In fact, it leads to polarization and disconnection.
So the pew research center did this super fascinating study back in 2016, demonstrating this.
It is like Science that demonstrates that science is not effective in causing change.
So here's what they did. They asked volunteers their opinions regarding climate change, things like do you believe in climate change and do you support the Paris agreement, things like that. They then divided people into weak climate change, believers and strong climate change.
Everybody was then informed that the average global temperature was predicted to rise by six degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And then everybody was asked to perform a personal temperature estimation for how much they thought based off of their personal beliefs and knowledge temperature would rise by the end of the century.
So, now comes the real test. Half the participants were told that there was some really great news, that in recent weeks, scientists found that they had completely overestimated the temperature increase. And now it was only going to increase between one and five degrees that we were in much better shape.
The other half of participants were told that there was some really bad news that scientists had underestimated temperature increase, and that temperatures were actually going to increase by like 11 degrees by the end of the century.
After this, all the participants were asked to update their personal temperature predictions. Did people change their personal opinions in light of expert assessment? Here's what they found. People only change their opinions if the information they received fit their initial world view.
So if they believed temperatures were going to be increasing like crazy and climate change was this catastrophic problem, they believed the scientists, when they were told that temperatures were going to rise by 11 degrees. And they ignored the science when they were told actually it's a lot less of a problem than we predicted.
This is so important to know about humans. As humans, we accept the truths that confirm our beliefs and we ignore the facts that prove us wrong. Understanding this about ourselves is key. It is a fundamental key for us to be able to move forward, because this tells us that using science as a motivator for change is fundamentally flawed approach.
That is not to say that science is not incredibly important to us. Not only does it transform our technology, our quality of life, our lives, but in my opinion, science and logic and understanding gives us this feeling of control when we are experiencing uncontrollable events. I turn to science when I'm in the middle of a depressive episode, and I don't know why it is. When I can't get out of bed in the morning. I learn about my serotonin receptors and my neurobiology and science helps me understand that my biology is not my fault.
Science helps ground us. It helps explain the unknowns about what we are currently experiencing, but it cannot help us motivate people towards action that they are not already willing to take.
Healthy climate conversations are not easy. They're fucking hard, like really, really, really hard because it requires us to relearn how to communicate motivation. My automatic habit is to tell you the scary science facts and then say, okay, go change yourself. But if I want to be effective, I have to have a very different type of conversation.
I have to have a different approach. These are hard conversations. They require courage and bravery. We have to be willing to enter into this vulnerable space of not knowing. We have to be willing to get really messy and conversation to fail and unlearn and be that scientist that can think again and think again and think again and come up with different solutions based off of the feedback we are getting.
Having these types of healthy climate conversations requires radical honesty and a willingness to fully own exactly where we are. To really say, Hey, this solution is not working for me because it is just too freaking inconvenient. If we're stuck in the mud of it, all, we feel manipulated.
If we're angry, whatever it is, we've got to own it. And then create the foundation from where we can then build. These types of conversations really require us to let go of this need to be right. These types of conversations require curiosity and creativity. Brene Brown talks about this, right? This is the wilderness! In order to save our planet, we must brave the uncomfortable, vulnerable place.
We must learn how to reconnect in this space and lose the freaking toxicity to not hurt and manipulate or throw these power trips at each other, but come together.
I'm not an expert in this. I fail more than I succeed. This podcast is going to provide me with what it is I need to hear to go forward. This podcast is going to apply psychology and mindfulness and intention, setting courageous action, storytelling to climate conversations.
This next season of the disobedient scientists podcast is all about owning our climate stuff. And building a resilient future from the muddy place we are in right now, it is going to be about how we can all become climate leaders.
Healthy climate conversations are about choosing what is right over, what is fun, fast and easy. For me, it is about practicing my values over just professing them. Who we are is how we lead. We are not helpless around climate change. We have a choice to do this different. We can choose resiliency over disengagement. We can live in integrity and choose courage over our comfort.
I'm really excited to explore this messy place with you. I'll talk to you next week.