370: Is It Over? A Direct Answer to Climate Despair

Is it already too late? If you follow the climate crisis closely, despair is a reasonable and rational response to what you're looking at.

About this episode

This week, we’re being led by you. We gathered the messages you've been sending and let them set the agenda. They're heavy ones, and we wanted to stay with them rather than rush past. Is there still hope, or is it over? If this civilisation ends, won't nature simply restore itself without us? How do you keep going when the grief feels total?

None of them have easy answers, and we don't pretend otherwise. Along the way, one listener pushes back on the phrase "pre-traumatic stress" and offers a truer one: earth grief, the other side of the coin from love. Another thread reaches for deep time - William MacAskill's claim that we are barely 2% of the way into humanity's story. How does that perspective change what matters now?

So - what can we actually do? From the language we use, to how we give our time and resources, to the places where each of us touches power. Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson challenge each other and us to find actions that make our shared climate grief easier to carry.

👀 Still looking for new terminology? Producer Ben suggests 'climate disruption', which captures the shift from the stable Holocene to a more uncertain world. 'Climate sabotage' can also be useful, if we want to shift focus to the perpetrators.

📘 Read What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill - the case for deep time and long-term thinking Tom draws on

📗 Revisit The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac - including the idea of the places where you "touch power"

🔗 Follow Stephanie Klotz on LinkedIn, whose letter reframed "pre-traumatic stress" as earth grief

🌊 Listen back to our AMOC episode

💷 Listen back to our philanthropy episode, the starting point for the question on giving small amounts

🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe (https://www.speakpipe.com/OutrageandOptimism)

Join the conversation:

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Or get in touch with us via this form.

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

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Full Transcript

Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version

00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:03.660

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.

00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:06.060

Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.

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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Today, we answer some of your questions on what the climate does to us. Thanks for being here. So we're still in the studio, and we wanted to get together and do a listener question episode, which we sometimes do. And these can be great conversations, so I'm really looking forward to this. But we must say at the top end that we get a lot of questions from our listeners about how can people personally face the challenges that we have in front of us. And this is about just the difficulty of living through such a consequential moment in history, where the impacts are rising, the alarm is getting greater. And of course, understandably, that is a difficult moment to face personally, to realize how do we deal with our emotions, how do we deal with our anxiety. So we wanted to answer some of your questions, because we get loads of them and we feel them too. So none of these are easy. We just want to sit with them and be with you in these questions and try together to come through them, to find a way in which we can collectively deal with the moment we're facing.

00:01:08.420 --> 00:01:11.300

Christiana Figueres: Now I know that Paul wants to jump in with some of these questions. Could I just say before you jump in, Paul, that this episode is being recorded under a structure of answering listener questions, but actually it's the opposite way around. It is we who are listening to you who are on the other side of this. So it's not that you're listening to us. This is an unusual episode in which you have expressed yourselves to us and we're in a deep listening mode ourselves to what you have communicated to us. So we're the listeners this time, Paul.

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Paul Dickinson: Thank you, Christiana and Tom, for setting this up. Look, let's start off with ShinyMew2.3 on Instagram who said this.

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Listener comment (read aloud): Is there still hope though or is it over?

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Paul Dickinson: It's the extraordinary abruptness of that comment that I think is fascinating, and my own take on it, and I'd love to get your view, is that it crystallizes the fact that this is all getting quite real now. And humans are super smart and we think super quickly, and so this is where the mind runs to. Is it over? And of course, my response listening to that is, no, it's not all over, it's beginning, and there are enormous changes coming to the way our world is, the way human society operates, and how we are as people. And those are going to be bad in many, many ways, and they're going to, I believe, also be good in many, many other ways. There are extraordinary tools at our disposal. There are resources and ingenuity. And there is inevitably great suffering now and far more in future. But I think I just wanted to offer up the idea that this is absolutely far from a binary. Is it over? I think it's the beginning of a journey now, which is very, very serious and has truly begun. And much will come, both bad and good. And there is everything to fear and everything to hope for. So I just wanted to kind of open that up. How does that land with you, Tom or Christiana?

00:03:50.700 --> 00:03:52.480

Tom Rivett-Carnac: So I think that's a lovely answer. And Christiana, I'd love to hear what you respond to that. I think that I almost think at this point, our responsibility is to step a little bit further back from that question. Because inevitably animates all of what we do, is the hope about where we'll get to. But I remember in our very first episode, when I asked David Attenborough, I said, how do you think about the world to come? And he said, do you know what? I don't think about it.

00:04:17.700 --> 00:04:18.500

Paul Dickinson: He said, I can't.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: He said, I can't. Because he said, because I can't bear it. And he said, we're living in a time of enormous jeopardy and no one knows the future. And it wouldn't change what I'm doing now to bring that about. Whether I have a definitional idea of how much hope I have for the future or not. And it reminded me also of something that many listeners will have heard, which is a quote from Lord of the Rings. When Frodo says, I wish it need not have happened in my time. And Gandalf, the wizard, replies, so do I. And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. And that's what I mean by stepping a bit back from that question.

00:05:03.340 --> 00:05:04.920

Christiana Figueres: Yeah, thanks to both of you. I agree with both of you. And I guess my question, as I listen to this question, is there still hope or is it over? I'm trying to listen for what is meant here by hope. Is it hope to return to something that we are attached to because we experienced it decades ago and our ancestors experienced it? Because if that is the hope, then that we do have to swallow the pill that is not going to come back, that the future is going to be remarkably different. If it's hope that humans can survive, maybe, maybe with a capital M, maybe we have all the tools and the ingenuity and the innovation and the da-da-da-da, to say, okay, we as a species will survive. And we're thinking thousands and thousands of years down the line. Is it hope for the survival of all of the other species that we know and love? That I don't think so, because that we already know that many species are reaching the limit of their adaptation capacity and are disappearing. We also know, by the way, that new species are emerging. The emergent species are developing. Nature always continues to innovate, because those are species that are already being born into very, very different conditions. So we can't hang on to the species that we know and love. We as a species might continue to live, might. And we might be in the company of other species that we don't even know of yet. The point, however, is exactly what you've just said, Tom. What does that mean? We don't really know what the future is going to be. Of all of that, and there are many sub-chapters of that future. The point is, what are we doing today? Because we cannot control the future. We can influence the direction in which we move in toward a future, but we can't control it. That does not, and just because we can't control it, does not exempt us from the responsibility of doing the responsible thing today because that's the only thing that we can do. That is what gives me a positive jolt every morning when I get out of bed, because it's like, okay, what can I do today? Where can I do it, and how do I want to do it? That's the piece that keeps me going.

00:07:55.860 --> 00:07:56.220

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. Where's the needle and how do I move it? As you've always said to me. Yeah. That's a very nice answer. As I've started down this road, can I give you one more Lord of the Rings quote before we move on? Please do. So this is again from Gandalf the Wizard, and he says, all worthy things that are in the world are now in peril, and these are all my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task, even if we fail. If anything passes through this night, that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again. For I am a steward of the world. I think that's the attitude we've got to have.

00:08:27.400 --> 00:08:29.060

Christiana Figueres: I am the steward of the world. Should we do anything else other than just read?

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Read Lord of the Rings quotes. Okay. Yeah, that's-

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Paul Dickinson: You know, Churchill's getting a run for it.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right. What's next?

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Paul Dickinson: Well, there's a follow-up also here from Angela on Spotify, responding to the AMOC episode, the Atlantic-Mary O'Donnell oscillating circulation episode.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Nicely done, Paul.

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Paul Dickinson: Here's the quote.

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Listener comment (read aloud): Are you sure that civilization is ending? It might be that civilization dies, that human beings as many living beings before disappear. Nature, there we can be sure, is in the transformation and will restore as Mother Earth did more than one time already.

00:09:09.620 --> 00:09:11.860

Paul Dickinson: And other people have said, made similar points. We get quite a lot of feedback on this. And I personally can see this sort of case if I take myself out of the human species, like the humans are gone and it's better for the world or something. But unfortunately, I'm a human and I'm really quite attached to humans. So it doesn't really work for me as a sort of reflective space that we get taught a lesson. I think of hundreds of millions, billions of children who have been brought into the world entirely innocent of the circumstances. And so no, I can't really reflect on any kind of rightness or balance that comes from the extinguishing of humans. I think it's a teachable moment, not an extermination moment. So if I can use such ludicrous language. But what do you think?

00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:01.920

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I've just read a very interesting book that I would recommend to listeners called What We Owe the Future. I don't know if either of you have read it by William MacAskill. And in it, he points out, it's a sort of an examination of deep time. If humanity survives on this planet, the average amount of time that an apex species has historically survived before an extinction event, then we are less than 2% of the way through humanity's time. So we are so ancient to most humans that will exist. It's almost impossible for us to internalize that in our minds.

00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:30.140

Christiana Figueres: We're so ancient, you mean we're so...

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We're so close to the beginning.

00:10:31.740 --> 00:10:33.060

Christiana Figueres: Yes, not ancient. We're so young.

00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:37.100

Tom Rivett-Carnac: But to them, we are the ancients, right?

00:10:37.100 --> 00:10:38.740

Christiana Figueres: Oh, yes, yes. We're so young as a species.

00:10:39.920 --> 00:10:41.000

Tom Rivett-Carnac: We're so young as a species.

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Paul Dickinson: I think I don't need a diagram. I just about got this.

00:10:43.980 --> 00:10:44.860

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, you just about got this. Okay. And what he does in the book, which is very wonderful, he sort of does a diagram of how many humans have lived. You know, little pictures of humans cover like two pages. How many are alive now is like half a page. The humans that will live on the assumption that we solve our current problems covers 20,000 books. So the magnification of the impact of the things we do now across all of those human lives is just enormous. And I found that doesn't mean that our present problems get reduced. But it made me think about the role of humanity in the world in quite a different way and where we sit in that right at the beginning of a really long story. And yeah, there are really challenging things around things like AMOC and others. But I do believe that we will find a way, I believe we'll find a way to address our current challenges and humanity will live that long life. And I also think thinking about that long life changes our sense of priorities around what we need to do now. So that would be my answer to that.

00:11:41.420 --> 00:11:46.060

Paul Dickinson: Shout out for Stefan Harding bringing us deep time as a concept. And also actually it makes me think directly, we were talking in a previous episode, two episodes now about speed of data centers and stuff. Speed is probably our greatest enemy right now.

00:11:59.600 --> 00:12:07.420

Christiana Figueres: I would also love to bring in a very thoughtful letter that we received from Stephanie Klotz. And I've already addressed it a little bit in a previous episode, but it's even more relevant today. It's a very thoughtful letter that she writes. And basically she is reacting to my use of the term pre-traumatic syndrome. And she argues very thoughtfully in the letter. And she says, it's not a disease. This that we're feeling is not a disease. It's not a pathology. It's grief. And she separates those two concepts, I think, very, very skillfully. She says, it's not a syndrome, it is grief. And she calls it earth grief. And she says, recognizing this pain, this earth grief, as Francis Weller calls it, as grief, connects us to the love that underpins it. I don't think it is the product of a probable traumatic event in the future, but rather a reflection of our profound connection to the land, to the ecosystems that sustain it, and to the people who inhabit it. Past, present, and future. Very different concept to my concept of pre-traumatic syndrome, and I'm really glad that she called me on it in this very thoughtful letter, because it is a very different understanding. It's a very different understanding, and by calling it earth grief, she does open the door to the other side of the coin, right? And we know, from everyone who does research into communications, that pain and grief are the other side of the coin of love. Yeah. You know, if we're in pain of something that we're losing, it's because we love that which we're losing. Yeah. And if we can identify that those two things are two sides of the same coin, then from the side of the coin that is love, we should be able to extract not attachment, but actually agency. That's the trick. It's not attachment because if we extract attachment from our love, then we're frankly screwed because we're never going to have... We're not going to have the life that we have now. We're certainly never going to have the life that we had yesterday again. We're going to have a different life. So we cannot extract attachment, but we can extract agency. Hence, coming to the same conclusion of before, that today is the moment in which we can. And so to pick up the other term that was used here, hope, it's hope, my favorite definition of hope, hope with its sleeves rolled up. That's what is here.

00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:03.680

Tom Rivett-Carnac: And thank you for it. It was Stephanie Klotz, right? Klotz. And she actually put some very thoughtful Instagram, LinkedIn posts about this. It's well worth following her on LinkedIn.

00:15:12.060 --> 00:15:12.720

Christiana Figueres: Yes, it is.

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Paul Dickinson: Just put a link in the show notes.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, definitely.

00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:19.020

Paul Dickinson: Okay, well, let me introduce another one now from Katie Nolan, also known as Emmy Winter. And she's speaking. Well, let's listen to the clip.

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Katie (listener, Ontario, Canada): Hello, Tom, Paul and Christiana. Thank you so much for this amazing podcast. My name is Katie and I'm sending this from Kemphill, Ontario, Canada. My question is about mental health. The climate crisis spins off a mental health crisis, which makes it harder for us to deal with the climate crisis. And that is a climate issue in itself. We even have new vocabulary that's being popularized with the word solastalgia, for one, being something that attempts to capture this all-encompassing grief of climate change. In my experience recently, a community art project has really helped me to connect with others and to shake the paralysis that I had been feeling and to strengthen my capacity to contribute. But I know this is an issue that perpetuates over and over again for lots of people. My question is, how have you experienced this in your careers? What lessons have you learned from yourselves and others that can help us to maintain the fortitude to keep going? Thank you so much.

00:16:34.400 --> 00:16:35.560

Paul Dickinson: Solastalgia? Is that how you pronounce it? It's extraordinary. And she's offering up here maybe a kind of a response, which is actually very helpful. Do you get like an inspiration or a hit or are you enlivened by this excellent kind of proposal? And what, you know, I mean, I find that when I felt best in climate change is when I've been with a whole bunch of people doing something that I think is brilliant, that's really going to do something about climate change. That is when I'm in my flow state, that is when I have my kind of personal ecstasy because you have a sense of, and it can be smaller or larger.

00:17:13.160 --> 00:17:14.720

Christiana Figueres: You're exercising your agency.

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Paul Dickinson: I'm exercising my agency, exactly. And actually, do you know what, if you think about the DNA and how humans are constructed and everything, this is our super clever sort of subconscious brain saying, oh, you're worried about this big thing, I'm going to make you feel good when you're exercising agency doing something about it. Well done, natural selection.

00:17:33.800 --> 00:17:34.420

Tom Rivett-Carnac: 100%, Paul. And I wonder if actually on that basis, we should now pivot to talking about individual actions, because that's what you're talking about as a real solution to this issue. And we had a great question from Alexandra Jimenez. So let's go to that.

00:17:47.040 --> 00:17:51.200

Alexandra Jimenez (listener): Hello, Tim and Christiana in particular, here at the Costa Rican Fellow. And I would like to ask you if it is possible to discuss about what can we do on a daily basis to really support the situation and support the efforts that are being done globally in order to save our planet or cooperate with the great work that big companies and big investors and committed governments are doing. We would like, ordinary people would like us, would like to feel a part of this. And it would be great to dedicate an episode about what can we really do on a daily basis that makes a change.

00:18:38.120 --> 00:18:43.300

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now, we have obviously answered versions of this question before, but it's such an important question.

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Paul Dickinson: I think it's the most repeating over the seven years of whatever we've been doing this. It's the question we've had most often.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Absolutely. And I think inevitably, as we're facing, as you said in the answer to the previous question, Paul, as we're facing this very frightening, overwhelming challenge, the question, the next question is, what can I do? How can I be part of trying to stop this happening? And we have had this persistent issue of agency because we are faced with the smallness of our own impact and the scale of the challenge. And it seems very difficult for humans in this current context to try and do a small bit towards a big challenge. And that's totally understandable. So there's a couple of things that I would like to say in response. One is, individuals have never been able to solve big systemic challenges. Look at previous moments in history. We have had consequential moments, whether it be wars, whether it be other different issues, we've all had to play individual parts towards shared outcomes collectively. It's not the case that because we don't have control, there is no meaning. We need to try to reflect on that and break that and say, okay, I may be a small part, but there's a joy and there's a satisfaction to just doing what is in front of me and what I'm able to do. The second thing I would say is, I think it's really important to think about the ways in which we can participate in systemic change, because that helps us feel a greater sense of agency. And we taught Christiana years ago in our book, The Future We Choose, about the necessity of thinking about the places where you touch power. Everyone touches power in different ways, whether you're on a school board or you're an employee, or you're a pension fund holder, or whatever it might be. Think about your life, the places where you touch power, and use those relationships that are totally unique to you, to try to change those institutions that you have access to. And of course, you don't have control over them. But that is your unique pattern of influence, and leverage that as best you can.

00:20:37.080 --> 00:20:41.000

Paul Dickinson: Isn't it, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can? I actually think that there's maybe just a distinction between two things you can do. One is kind of go on Google or whatever and look for things that people are doing. The AI is getting better and better, so we're woven in. It'll give you little essays so you can put in any topic anywhere. What are people doing about heating, insulation? What are people doing about transport? What are people doing about anything, food? So there's so much information, and that will stimulate you. And the other one is your own personal creativity, however it is expressed. Do not underestimate your own genius, your own whatever. Go for a walk in the park and think and reflect and smile and chat to your friends and family and whoever. And it may well be that you do something exquisite on your own. It may be that you join up with lots of others. But don't be afraid of the fact this is complex. And the good news is there's hundreds and hundreds of millions of people working full time on climate change right now. And you'll be joining the biggest, happiest family you could ever hope to meet.

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Christiana Figueres: Even if you don't know them?

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Paul Dickinson: Even if you don't know them. Yeah, when we spoke to the brilliant Ted Danson, incredibly famous actor. And he said he doesn't really want to talk to people socially about anything other than protecting the oceans. And then anyone who wants to protect the oceans is immediately his friend. And he wants to go out and chat with them and spend time with them. So yeah, common cause, you know, courage calls to courage everywhere.

00:22:00.460 --> 00:22:18.800

Christiana Figueres: I agree with both of you and just want to underline that the danger is that as we do what you have suggested, that we think that the impact of what we do is just what we see ourselves. And that's not true.

00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:21.160

Paul Dickinson: That's a great point.

00:22:21.160 --> 00:22:22.820

Christiana Figueres: That is just not true. Because we're all cultivating, if you will, a relational field here by doing everything that you have described. We're, it's almost like we're cultivating our own huge mega Petri dish of the experimentation under these conditions of what can be done. And each of us is contributing to that. Even, and sir, there's so many people contributing to it. Millions of people, most of whom we will never meet and never know of, but they are contributing to it. So actually, a better analogy is the human mycelium.

00:23:03.500 --> 00:23:03.880

Paul Dickinson: Yes.

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Christiana Figueres: That is what we have. We have a human mycelium. It's not just under the forest. We have a human mycelium that is interconnected in many different ways that we can't even imagine. Certainly, we cannot see or describe. Hence, this description is pretty pathetic.

00:23:22.580 --> 00:23:23.180

Paul Dickinson: No, it's not.

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Christiana Figueres: But think that each of us is a tiny little node in this human mycelium, and that whatever we do and act and think is actually sending energy and information and agency into the broad mycelium of the human society, and is bringing about change. Yes, slowly. Yes, definitely slowly. But there's no way that anybody can argue that we are static. That is just simply not the case. We're never static. We're always changing. And the question is, in what direction do we want to inject our effort, our time, our agency, our innovative thinking in what direction? And that's the direction in which the mycelium moves.

00:24:13.320 --> 00:24:15.900

Paul Dickinson: Mycelium about giving nutrients and receiving nutrients.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I like that answer. And we had a great question from Unenough, which relates to an issue that we've actually struggled to answer before. And it was in response to our philanthropy episode, where we were talking about very wealthy individuals giving away large amounts of money. And she asked us, do you have recommendations for normal people with very small amounts to spare and where to donate it? So I wonder what answers we have to that.

00:24:36.700 --> 00:24:38.440

Paul Dickinson: I can't say Outrage and Optimism, can I? This is a philanthropically funded podcast. You can send money. Are you able to accept that or not?

00:24:45.600 --> 00:24:48.040

Tom Rivett-Carnac: I don't know, but you said it now, so apparently yes. I mean, I would say rather than saying here or there, I mean, obviously your answer is excellent. I think it should be things that make you happy. I think there's so many important things that if you care about refugees, the international, you know, the IRC is incredibly important and do amazing work. If you care about restoring nature, there's an enormous number of amazing NGOs that either restore degraded land, if you care about that, or protect standing forests and the jewels of biodiversity that we're in danger of losing. If you're concerned about air pollution and kids breathing poisoned air, there's lots of places to look at in that direction, or you invest it somewhere locally to your community.

00:25:29.840 --> 00:25:33.900

Christiana Figueres: I was going to say, and the confluence of both of those is ideal. If you care about air pollution, look for a project that is working on air pollution close to you. Because if you do it close to you, if you donate close to you, chances are, A, it makes more sense to you, it's more exciting to you. And how about you donate, even if it's a small amount of money, but also your creativity, your time, your idea, your effort. Now you're bringing two parts of yourself, two parts of your resources to it. One is your financial support, but also your personal engagement, which helps that activity, but also helps you because of what we said before. If I can exercise my agency, I just feel so much better.

00:26:18.820 --> 00:26:19.240

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. So I think that's, I mean, how in a way, if you do your research and you want to donate money and you want to make the world a better place, you kind of can't make a mistake, right? But it has to be something that feels intrinsic to you. And then I think-

00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:31.700

Christiana Figueres: To you, yes.

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Paul Dickinson: Just the last thing I'd say is don't forget also your conventional expenditure. If you're buying an electric car, new or secondhand, if you're buying a heat pump and taking time to install that, if you're insulating property, if you're eating meat-free diet or much reduced beef diet, these are all things that are also contributing. So it's both philanthropy but your conventional expenditure. Don't overestimate how important that is.

00:26:54.220 --> 00:26:55.200

Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's a very good point. Now, Christiana, you haven't brought us a question yet. Do you want to bring one?

00:26:58.980 --> 00:26:59.580

Christiana Figueres: Okay. Let us move to Hillary, who left us a voice message.

00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:07.380

Hillary (listener): Hi, my name's Hillary. Thank you so much for your amazing podcast and for your recent episodes, in particular on health and rising sea levels. We've heard a few times about the need to reframe or layer the climate crisis through other lenses of health, the economy, social justice, and so on. The thing is, I'm sure that those of us who listen to this podcast and otherwise believe in the science and the urgency of the situation don't need persuading that this is a good idea. My question is, how do we get others who either don't see climate through those lenses or as a problem at all to change their mindset? Thanks very much for everything you do.

00:27:48.180 --> 00:27:53.440

Paul Dickinson: Well, this is the $50 billion trillion question, which is the ultimate link.

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Christiana Figueres: Is that the amount you are going to donate to something? It is.

00:27:56.580 --> 00:28:03.160

Paul Dickinson: I've finally realized that it's time for me to invest a trillion of my own money in a test.

00:28:03.160 --> 00:28:04.960

Tom Rivett-Carnac: We've been waiting for this moment, Paul, yeah.

00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:17.220

Paul Dickinson: To find not how to split the atom, but how to link all the concepts in climate change with one unified concept, which this brilliant question is leaning towards. And how close are we to having found that or felt that or sensed it? I mean, Christiana, I know that you've seen an aspect of a relationship, for example, between, I guess you would call it Buddhist philosophy and how to be in the world. I think I spend a lot of time thinking about the private sector. Tom, you spend a lot of time thinking about governments, but is there anything that sort of underpins it all? Or is that a huge concept or is that a little tactical linker? Or both?

00:28:49.600 --> 00:28:51.980

Christiana Figueres: Yeah, let's just take an example, okay? Because Hillary gives us a couple of examples, health, the economy, social justice. Let me just take health because it's the first one that she lists. So I think her conundrum is somebody is interested in health issues, but doesn't see the link to climate change. I think that is her conundrum.

00:29:10.260 --> 00:29:11.060

Tom Rivett-Carnac: I think so, yeah.

00:29:11.620 --> 00:29:32.000

Christiana Figueres: And so, Hillary, my take on this is not to make any statements, but to ask questions of a person who's interested in health and ask them questions that would allow them to derive the conclusions that we want them to derive. So I would ask questions such as...

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Paul Dickinson: That's your technique, isn't it? You ask questions to get them to the right answer.

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Christiana Figueres: Well, to the answer that I would like them to answer. But you can ask, you know, somebody who's interested in health, you can ask all kinds of questions around pollution, especially in cities. You can ask them questions about heat waves, which have huge consequences. What is causing these heat waves? What is amplifying the heat waves? Where is the pollution coming from? What are the effects of the pollution? How do we reduce the pollution? You can ask them all kinds of questions that don't necessarily force them to say climate change, but that in their thinking patterns lead them to, ah, the root of all of this is actually, for example, the burning of fossil fuels, or the root of this is the deforestation in terms of, you know, because you can also go to health with respect to food. So it's about taking a topic that is important to them and asking them questions that one after the other, it's sort of like, you know, like two-year-olds always go like, why? And then you say something and they go like, why? And then so that kind of rolling question for them to come all the way back to the root of this problem is the burning of fossil fuels.

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Paul Dickinson: I've spent decades also asking corporations questions because exactly this process, you don't, if you go to somebody and say, well, you should be doing this, they're not interested. But if you ask somebody what they should be doing within a certain context, education, I think means to draw out from, they find within themselves the answer that is the right answer, and it's theirs, not yours.

00:31:27.700 --> 00:31:36.280

Tom Rivett-Carnac: And do you think it matters if it doesn't necessarily get drawn back to the burning of fossil fuels as long as the outcome that solves the problem is arrived at? So I'm thinking about things like we had Rachel Kite on last week or recently, and she was telling us that the green economy sector in the UK is growing at 10 percent faster than any other sector. Now, if you care about jobs, if you care about growth, if you care about prosperity, obviously, you should invest in the technology that's creating those growth elements. Now, you can come to that conclusion without ever accepting climate science, without ever caring about fossil fuels, without worrying about air pollution. Does that matter or is that a good thing?

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Paul Dickinson: Well, that's solar in Texas, right?

00:32:03.640 --> 00:32:04.620

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Doesn't matter.

00:32:06.780 --> 00:32:10.120

Christiana Figueres: Doesn't matter to me as long as we're doing the right thing. I, frankly, I am very open to all kinds of...

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Paul Dickinson: It's actually the point Spielberg made in Schindler's List that Schindler didn't start off being good, but he sort of got in the habit of good and then it became a very powerful force. Very beautiful story.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's true, actually. And that fact about habit is really under made. It's about building that muscle and becoming accustomed to doing those things. I was on a panel yesterday talking about exactly this issue and someone from the Climate Change Committee made the point that if this heat wave that we're currently experiencing in London is anything like previous ones, there will be a number of older people that die as a result of this. That is happening right now. That may be in the single digit thousands in the UK or this part of the UK. That's happening all over. If we care about that, we need to do something about this. Nothing to do with fossil fuels.

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Paul Dickinson: Single digit thousands, September 11th was single digit thousands. It's a big number.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. Actually, there was a connected point made by Connor Blundell, who was talking about the AMOC episode that we did, and talking about the fact that in the UK and in Northern Europe, actually, things might get colder. He asked us, is this one of the reasons why we now hear climate change instead of global warming? What do you two think about that?

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Christiana Figueres: Well, there's so many ways that have been developed of talking about this. I think global warming was probably the first, because it reflected the fact that average temperatures are warming. But it just felt a little bit too cozy. And then we moved to climate change. And then we moved to climate weirding. And then we moved to climate emergency. Climate crisis. Climate crisis. Poly-crisis. So if I look at it on a chronological line, every time we're getting to more and more dramatic words. Because the situation is more and more dramatic. We're far away from the cozy global warming. Far away.

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, and most people sort of, a lot of people I know live in relatively cold countries. And I remember saying to some kind of, I was talking to a tax driver and he says, you know, what do you think about climate change? He says, oh, last few winters, we have been lucky. I always remember him saying that. And I kind of thought to myself, well, you know, I mean, yeah, this is a cold country and it's kind of nice when the winter isn't terribly cold. But I actually got into climate change because of AMOC, this idea that the thing was shut down. And well, in the UK, we're on the same latitude as like Nova Scotia or something, and be freezing here. And I think one of the reasons why it moved to climate change was because it could be that, yeah, people would be completely frozen by the weather patterns changing. And then you get the sort of Trumpian wing of the world saying, oh, well, you know, they are changing their tune, and it's not real, and they used to worry about this and that. In a sense, it's such a big multi-dimensional topic. I think it almost rather escapes labeling now. But I think climate change will do for now. Climate emergency is better. I think climate emergency is better.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: But there's an interesting question, and I know we have to end in a minute, but is it wise to keep going through this sort of like definitional inflation? Because the issue is...

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Christiana Figueres: Nice term.

00:35:22.200 --> 00:35:28.240

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, because the issue is getting more urgent, but it does create this pushback of like, oh, you just keep changing the language. Should we not stick with a term that is science-based that is dispassionate? I mean, if you look at other issues...

00:35:34.200 --> 00:35:35.340

Christiana Figueres: Which is your choice?

00:35:35.580 --> 00:35:38.560

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, I suppose, what is anthropogenic climate change? Is what they call... What the scientists would call...

00:35:39.980 --> 00:35:42.020

Christiana Figueres: Anthropogenic is not going to be understood.

00:35:42.780 --> 00:35:44.600

Paul Dickinson: Good cheap prada, anthropogenic.

00:35:44.640 --> 00:35:47.280

Tom Rivett-Carnac: But think about like something like an immigration issue. Do they... They don't keep changing the term. You know, there are people who think immigration... Okay, so give me an example of how they do it.

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Paul Dickinson: You see, we're being invaded by, you know, unbelievably poor people in the boats trying to come across.

00:35:59.080 --> 00:36:02.160

Tom Rivett-Carnac: They change some of the language around it to make it more emotive. It becomes one of the things we get attacked for. And I just don't know if it's a good thing that we keep changing it.

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Christiana Figueres: What I can tell you is that the three of us are not going to control that.

00:36:10.360 --> 00:36:11.060

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Oh, really?

00:36:11.400 --> 00:36:11.960

Christiana Figueres: Really.

00:36:12.260 --> 00:36:17.520

Paul Dickinson: Yeah, but what I can tell you is that people might say, Christiana, you are such an expert. You have, you know, delivered so much. What should we call it?

00:36:21.780 --> 00:36:31.200

Christiana Figueres: See, I push back on Tom on this because I think, I think words are really important and are really powerful. And I think the words that we use should express the sentiment of the moment and the alarm of the moment. I mean, just think if we had said, no, no, no, we're not going to migrate away from global warming. We're going to call it global warming for the next 300 years, really. So I'm up for change and I'm up for innovation and using words that express the drama of the moment.

00:36:57.640 --> 00:36:58.840

Tom Rivett-Carnac: So I hear that. I think my question is, is it working?

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Paul Dickinson: Climate emergency, is it working?

00:37:02.720 --> 00:37:13.460

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Is the change of language making people who are already committed feel more satisfied with the situation or is it persuading those who aren't persuaded that this is more urgent? If you shift from saying climate change to climate emergency to people say, Oh my God, it's an emergency. I don't know. That's something we should maybe look into in the future.

00:37:22.240 --> 00:37:28.780

Christiana Figueres: Well, is somebody going to say, Oh my God, it's an emergency just because they hear the word climate emergency?

00:37:28.780 --> 00:37:29.800

Paul Dickinson: Maybe not. As long as there's contest of the issues, there'll be contest of the name. But if somebody wants to put a flag and I'll say climate emergency.

00:37:39.240 --> 00:37:39.760

Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right. Ben has his head in his hands. I think he's saying it's time to wrap this up. So this is a question from another day.

00:37:44.820 --> 00:37:45.040

Paul Dickinson: Okay.

00:37:45.040 --> 00:37:46.160

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Now we can do it the other way.

00:37:46.160 --> 00:37:49.560

Paul Dickinson: Ben, do you have a suggestion from the control booth? One suggestion from Ben and then work on rap.

00:37:52.500 --> 00:37:55.500

Christiana Figueres: Okay, Ben, this is your moment in history.

00:37:57.120 --> 00:37:57.500

Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay. So Ben says, and this will check how many listeners actually do this. It's going to be in the show notes.