Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on understanding the impacts of climate change on people and the planet. She is the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy and a Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Professor of Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University. She has served as a lead author for the Second, Third, and Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessments and her work has resulted in over 125 peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, and other publications. She is the author of the best-selling book Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. She also hosts the PBS Digital Series Global Weirding and is a co-founder of Science Moms. Hayhoe is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Scientific Affiliation, an Honourary Fellow of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, an Oxfam Sister of the Planet, and the World Evangelical Alliance’s Climate Ambassador. She has been named to lists including the TIME 100 Most Influential People and Fortune’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders, received a number of awards including the National Center for Science Education’s Friend of the Planet Award, the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Communication Prize and Ambassador Award, and the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award, and is a United Nations Champion of the Earth in Science and Innovation.
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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. This is a very special edition. We’ve got a rock star in the environmental world with us today, someone who’s just so special, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe. She’s the chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy and a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University. Thank you. Thank you, Doc. Thank you, Katharine, for joining us today.
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe: Thank you for having me.
John: You know and I said, couple of things to do, you’re also the author of this wonderful book we’re going to be talking about ‘Saving us’ as well. But before we get talking about all of these amazing things you’re doing in your very, very busy career, I’d love you to share a little bit about yourself personally, Katharine. Where’d you grow up and how’d you get on this fascinating and impactful journey that you’re on?
Katharine: Sure. So I am from Toronto, Canada, and my dad was a science teacher. So I grew up with the idea that science was the most interesting and coolest thing you could possibly study. I mean, who does not want to know why the sky is blue? or why polar bears actually have black skin? Everybody wants to know that, I thought as a child. And so I grew up with this appreciation of science, of recognizing that it was interesting and fun. It didn’t really hit me that it was hard until university and by then it was too late. So my undergraduate degree and my original research was actually in the field of astronomy and physics. I was studying galaxies and I was looking to continue that as a career when at university, I needed an extra class to finish my undergrad degree. And I’d already taken all the fun classes like children’s literature. And so I was looking around and there was this brand new class on climate change that was being offered by a professor who had just joined my university. And so I thought, well, that looks interesting. Why not take it? So I did. And as they say, the rest is history, because let me tell you why. I knew about climate change. I’d learned about it obviously in school. And I thought of it as so many people still think of it today as an environmental issue that environmentalists care about and environmentalists are working on to fix. And we can watch, if we don’t see ourselves as environmentalists, we can watch their documentaries and support their efforts. And I also thought of it as an issue that is not affecting us now, but it’ll matter in the future. So when it gets really bad, that’s when we’ll focus on it, if the environmentalists haven’t fixed it by then.
John: Right.
Katharine: So I took this class and this class, you know, just for the record was about, you know, more than 25 years ago. And I was so shocked to find out at that time, that climate change was already affecting us at that time. It was no longer a future issue, even 25 years ago. And I learned that it does not only affect the environment in terms of plants and animals and oceans and ice sheets, climate change affects people, but it doesn’t affect people equally. So people who are already poor or marginalized, who are already living in low-income neighborhoods here in North America, or subsistence farmers on the other side of the world, the people who’ve done the least to cause the problem are the people who are most impacted, by how climate change is supersizing our extreme weather events, making our droughts and our floods and our heat waves worse, affecting our water and our food and the safety of our homes. And that’s not fair. So in addition to growing up in Toronto, when I was nine years old, we actually moved down to South America, and I lived in Columbia for a number of years growing up. And living in a country where you see people who are literally building their homes out of the garbage they collect, like the tied detergent cardboard boxes, and when the rains come, it just washes away the entire hillside of people. And there’s no insurance, there’s no National Guard, there’s no FEMA. You know, knowing people who don’t have clean water, who aren’t able to feed their families, it made me realize it’s not just like people over there, it’s my friends, it’s people I know, like, these are the people who are being most affected. And so that really fed into my sense of this is not fair, just because you happen to be born in a different place or to a different family, doesn’t mean that you should be bearing the brunt of other people’s choices, in fact, quite the opposite. And so that’s why I became a climate scientist, not because of my passion for science, but because of my passion for justice. And so that’s still what drives me today is the fact that today, even more so than back then, people are being affected real people, many of them in the place where we live, many of them on the other side of the world. And climate change is not only an environmental issue, it’s a human issue. It affects every aspect of our existence on this planet. So to care about climate change, you don’t have to be an environmentalist, you don’t have to be a scientist, you definitely don’t have to be an advocate or an activist, you just have to be a human. And as far as I know, we’re all that, which means that we all have every reason we need to care about climate change.
John: That’s so, and is mom and dad still alive, if you don’t mind me asking?
Katharine: Oh, yes, they are still alive. My dad is still going strong.
John: He must be darn[?] proud of you and what you’ve accomplished already in your career in your life. I mean, that must that’s a dream come true for a science professor, for sure.
Katharine: Well, and I would say to that his mother, my grandmother, who is no longer with us, she did not work outside the home, but she had eight children. So she certainly worked a lot inside the home. But she had she went to university and she had a degree in science education. So she taught all her children to appreciate science, my dad and all of his sisters and his brother. And then now I sort of feel like I’m the I’m the second generation of that. And then my son is the third generation.
John: This is this is definitely science in your family’s DNA. Like just say that. That’s that’s awesome. That is just wonderful. And it’s so important what you just talked about, though, Katharine, in that it’s just not climate science isn’t just about the environment. It’s about, like you said, the inequities that exist. And those who are suffering the worst brunt of it were not the creators of some of the biggest harms that have happened in this planet. It’s not. Talk a little bit about, though, OK, that was that course in college. And of course, now you’re on a track. But how do you go from starting to study about becoming a client of a science, a climate scientist to becoming one and then evolving that into the chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy and a distinguished professor at Texas Tech? How does that happen? Like how does how does that journey go? Explain that arc a little bit.
Katharine: It’s not an easy one. A lot of hard work goes into being a scientist.
John: Yeah.
Katharine: As with being successful at any job. And I think the secret is really the same no matter where we are, is we have to have a passion for what we’re doing.
John: Yeah.
Katharine: So this isn’t something where you just sort of turn up and do the hours and go home.
I mean, if I was going to do that, I’d be doing something probably very different with my life. I’m doing this because it matters and because I believe that I can make a difference.
John: Got it. Understood. And how…
Katharine: We all want to make a difference.
John: We all want to make a difference. How long have you been the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy?
Katharine: I’ve been a chief scientist here for three years.
John: Wow.
Katharine: And I’ve been at Texas Tech now for over 15years. I joined as an associate professor and then worked my way up and obviously doing good science matters. So at a university, you do your research, you write grant proposals. But it was really interesting because moving to Texas was another big inflection point in my life. So the first inflection point was taking that class and realizing that climate change was an everything issue and that climate change was really a justice issue. And so for me, it wasn’t only a matter of right or wrong for me as a Christian, I feel very strongly that we’re called to love others and care for others. And frankly, that ethic of caring for those less fortunate than us is in every major religion. And most of us who don’t adhere to any religion, we would agree with that, too. It’s a pretty basic sense of caring for others and being good stewards of the resources that we’ve been given. And what more important resource do we have than this shared home, our planet? So that was the first inflection point for me. But the second inflection point was when we moved to Texas, which we did for my husband’s job, not for me. And by then I had figured out that there was quite a few people who didn’t think climate change is real. And a lot of them lived in Texas.
John: Understood. Well, but also, you know, going back to my family’s Armenian, we were raised Christian as well. And so going back to just the Christian part of this whole discussion, maybe God puts you where you’re the most needed.
Katharine: I actually think so. I do.
John: Right. So God knows what’s going on in Texas. And I love the state. I have a big facility in Dallas. Let me just say that to start with. And I had tremendous, I just, you know, I’m a huge, I’m big on Texas, but I get what you mean. And especially at the time you were moving there. What, by the way, what does your husband do? It’s fascinating to understand the yin and yang of someone’s career in life as well.
Katharine: Oh, yeah. So I met my husband at graduate school. He was doing his PhD in applied linguistics, Studying how people learn second languages.
John: Oh, wow. That’s fascinating.
Katharine: So we all learn our first language pretty naturally. We don’t even remember how we learned it. But learning second language can often be challenging. So that’s what he studied. But on the side, he’s really interested in practical theology. And he started writing a number of books and doing radio shows on that. And so when we came to Texas, in addition to being a professor at the university, they were recruiting him and I was the plus one they had to put up with to get him.
John: Wow.
Katharine: So in addition, in addition to doing that, though, there was a local church that lost their pastor. So they asked him to pastor their church. And then he started doing even more in that area. And finally, he just quit the university started a nonprofit. Now he has a nationwide SiriusXM call in radio show every night on SiriusXM family talk. He’s writing his 15th book now.
He has a national nonprofit called the grace message. I mean, he just does something that looks totally different than what I do. But actually, in terms of communication and engaging people, it’s actually quite similar.
John: It’s so exciting. Wait a second. What’s it? Let’s give a shout out again. I’ll put it in the show notes for all of our listeners and viewers. What’s the name of his SiriusXM call in talk show?
Katharine: Sure. So his organization is called the grace message. Grace message. And his name is Dr. Andrew Farley. And he is on at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on SiriusXM family talk, which is 132.
John: Oh yeah?
Katharine: He’s also on about 200 other radio stations around the country.
John: Wow.
Katharine: Yeah.
John: Wow. Holy Toledo. Yeah. This is, that’s that’s that’s impressive. That’s super impressive. And so now you’re down in Texas. And now, you know, you went as the plus one, as we all learned. And God put you where you were needed down there to sort of bring the gospel of climate science to Texas and. Talk a little bit about, OK, your professorship is one thing. The Nature Conservancy came knocking or were you involved with them or did they just come knocking three years ago and said, we need the best and the brightest? And you are now seen as the number one person in the world in this in this discipline. And we want you is that, how did it really work with regards to transitioning from just your professorship to the Nature Conservancy as well?
Katharine: Well, that was pretty much the way it went. But in between that. In between that was what happened when I moved to Texas. So up until then, I was doing as much applied science as I could. So I wanted to do science that would make a difference that wouldn’t just get published in a scientific journal or presented at scientific conferences. I wanted to do science that would help people make real world decisions. So, you know, I had work that was already being presented to Congress on how to how the U.S. could meet its international climate targets. I was working with cities like the city of Chicago, the city of Washington, D.C., on helping with their climate preparedness plans to build resilience and prepare all of their different city functions and systems for the impacts of a changing climate. I was already doing that type of work because I wanted to, you know, to make a difference. But when we moved to Texas, that was when I got my first invitation to speak to a group of people who weren’t so sure about this whole thing. So up until then, I had certainly talked to a lot of people about climate change, but they were all people who are already worried about it and they just wanted more information. But when I moved here, within about two months of moving here, I got my first invitation to speak to a women’s group and they were interested, but they were sort of like, well, I’m not sure. Like we hear it’s a hoax. We hear it’s real. What’s the deal? And so I feel like everybody needs to understand this. So I put together my best PowerPoint presentation and I went and I walked through all the data and the science and the facts, but then I listened very carefully to their questions because I figured their questions were what they wanted to know that I hadn’t talked about. And I realized that a lot of their questions were, but what about this? And what about that? Because by then we’re starting to hear more and more about it in the news, but there was a lot of sort of, he said, she said, how do we know it’s not natural cycles or volcanoes, you know, all that type of stuff. So one of the women there at that, I think it was, what was it? It was, I can’t remember some type of women’s group. Somebody there was part of a book club. And so then they invited me to come speak to the book club a couple months later. So I revised my presentation to answer the questions that I’d heard from the first group. And then at the book club, I listened very carefully and then they had more questions. So I revised it. And then somebody asked me to speak at the senior citizens home. So I revised it and spoke there and listened. And pretty soon I realized I was answering their science questions and all the questions I was getting is why should I care? So then I started talking about how it was affecting Texas. And it turns out Texas is the most vulnerable state in the U S to climate impacts.
John: Wow.
Katharine: So I had lots to say about what’s happening in Texas. And then I kept on going and then I started to hear, well, what are we supposed to do about it? And then I was like, well, I’m a bit stymied. I mean, I’m a scientist. I diagnosed the problem. I don’t tell you how to fix it, but you can’t like, I had nobody else to pull in with me to tell them that part. So I felt like, well, I have to figure that out. So I started to research and thankfully here in Texas, it turns out we have more wind energy than any other state. And that’s a huge part of the solution.
John: Wow
Katharine: Now, Texas actually has more utility scale solar than any other state too. And then also we are building resilience in our cities, using green infrastructure, looking at regenerative agricultural practices. In fact, at my university, we have some of that going on. There’s a lot of different solutions that I could bring in to talk about. And then ultimately I got to the question of, and this is why I wrote my book, ‘Saving Us’, the two questions I was getting from everybody I spoke to in Texas or out of Texas was, where do you find hope? Or are we screwed? Like, is it too late? You know, is the goose cooked? And how do I have conversations about this? Because I’m really worried. In fact, nowadays, two thirds of people in the US are worried, but they don’t know what to do. And so if we don’t know what to do, we don’t want to talk about it. So that’s why I wrote my book is to answer the questions, where do we find hope / are we screwed? And how do I have conversations about why it matters and what we can do not the polar bears, not the ice sheets, but where I live and what real solutions look like. So that was a huge inflection point for me personally. And I started spending a lot more of my time talking about it, talking to everybody from cities to industry organizations, to churches, to Christian colleges, started to do social media back in the days when Twitter was a new thing, I just hopped on right away and started to see, well, can I talk to people this way? So a lot of that is why I started to be better known, because I had the science, but I also had the ability to talk about the science to people who don’t have PhDs in atmospheric science. And so that together was, I think, what led me to the Nature Conservancy and a lot of the other things I do as well.
John: This is fascinating, because since we’re living in a political cycle right now, or a super cycle, if we talk about a politician’s stump speech, you’re going back and saying your original stump speech, which was done with like-minded, true believers already in climate change, was terrifically altered for the better as you listened more to people’s questions and skepticisms, and therefore were able to even formulate a much more compelling stump speech, and give also not only just the facts and the science, but also then make it solution-based as well.
Katharine: Totally.
John: That’s brilliant. And that was the while point of writing ‘Saving us’?
Katharine: Yes.
John: This is a wonderful book. For our listeners and viewers, there’s going to be a link in the show notes to where to buy this, obviously Amazon or any other great bookstore in your area that you love buying books from. By the way, for those who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Dr. Katharine Hayhoe with us today. She’s the Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy and also Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, and the author of Saving Us. To find her and her colleagues at Nature Conservancy, please go to www.nature.org. Katharine, so, this is a best-selling book. Talk a little bit about your day-to-day role at the Nature Conservancy. How does that differ from your teaching role at Texas Tech University?
Katharine: It’s quite different, but I think it’s all sort of part of the same. How do we envision and shape that better world, and how do we equip people with the skills and abilities to get us there?
John: Right.
Katharine: That’s why I teach, and that’s why I’m at the Nature Conservancy.
John: When I was in college, now I’m 62 years old, so when I was in college, there was no such thing as an environmental scientist. There wasn’t things even such as Chief Sustainability Officers or Chief Impact Officers. The program that you’re part of in Texas Tech, is that part of environmental science degrees or other type of sustainability degrees that are offered at Texas Tech?
Katharine: No. In fact, my background, my master’s and PhD are in atmospheric science, which is specifically a type of earth science or geoscience. People with my degree, they can study weather forecasting, they can study tornadoes or severe weather, or they can study climate change, which is what I do. When I joined Texas Tech, I joined the geoscience department, but then about 10 years ago, I moved departments, which is very unusual in an academic setting.
John: Okay
Katharine: I moved departments, and I am now in the political science department. One of the reasons why I did is because the greatest barriers standing between us and a better future in terms of addressing and tackling the climate crisis, the barriers are not lack of science. We’ve known since the 1800s that digging up and burning coal back then, and gas and oil today, produced heat trapping gases that are wrapping this blanket of carbon pollution around the atmosphere, causing us to warm. We’ve known that since the 1800s. Since the 1960s, scientists were warning US presidents. Lyndon B. Johnson was formally warned by scientists about the risks of climate change. So i mean there’s always more to discover about this planet. Our planet is amazing. It’s as complex as the human body. We could be studying it for thousands of years, and we’d be learning new things every year. But to know that climate is changing, humans are responsible, the impacts are serious, and the time to act is now, we’ve had that information for 60, 70 years. So why aren’t we acting? It isn’t lack of earth science information. It’s how we as humans interact with this science and make decisions, policy decisions, economic decisions, business decisions, moral and ethical decisions, even religious and theological decisions, personal decisions. So being in the Department of Political Science, I still do my atmospheric science research, but I also do social science research on how we can most effectively connect with people and help people make the connection between what I think of as our head and our heart. So a lot of what we have is in our head. We know that climate is changing. Most people are worried about it. People know it will affect plants and animals and people in the future, but we don’t understand how it affects what I care about today. How does it affect the bottom line at my business, the supply chain, the return on my investments, the insurance rates on my business or my home, the price of food in the grocery store, the quality of the air my kids and I are breathing in, and how that affects our future health. We haven’t made the head-to-heart connection, and so that isn’t really about earth science. That’s a lot more about the social science of how we as humans understand information and react to it.
John: Understood. So, People now taking your course in particular in the politics side of it, are they poli-sci majors, or are they all a varying group of different people who are working towards their matriculation?
Katharine: So my undergrad classes are primarily taken by our poli-sci majors, which is great because I feel like decision makers really need to know about this. But my grad classes, I open up to students across the whole university. So I have had students take my classes who are pursuing a master’s or PhDs in natural resources, in economics, in public administration, in chemical engineering or environmental engineering, in English literature or visual arts or architecture, or even some law and business students. And I love it because we need everybody. We cannot do this with just the earth scientists. In fact, to be totally honest, at this point in time, I think we need a lot of other things more than we need earth scientists. So, I love the fact that there’s all of these amazing kids and young people who want to figure out why climate change matters. They want to make that head-to-heart connection, and then they want to make the next connection, which is heart-to-hands. In other words, because of what I care about and what I’m passionate about and what I love, what can I do to make a difference?. And when I just see one person make that connection, It is just the most hopeful, empowering, encouraging thing in the world.
John: I love it. Let’s go back to the book, and then I’m going to go back to politics again. When someone reads this book, what is the one or two major takeaways when they’re done, that when they put this down, that you hope that your real goal was that they take away from this wonderful book here?
Katharine: Well, So I do a lot of talking to people around the world. And I actually do most of my talks virtually. About 90% of my talks are virtual talks. So I speak to people. I might be talking to people in Asia. I might be talking to people in Europe. I might be talking to Catholic nuns in upstate New York or a green building society of architects in Florida or the local high school just down the road. You know I speak to people across the spectrum. And being a scientist, I, for many years, have used tools to collect people’s questions. So People always have questions and I really like people to be able to ask them on their phones and then upvote or downvote the ones that they most like. Because what I found early on is when I was giving a talk, typically, it’s only the older, more confident people in the front row who want to ask the questions. A lot of the younger people, they don’t get their questions out because they don’t want to stand up with a microphone in front of people. So if you just let people put their questions in their phone, you get a lot more diverse questions. And you let people pick what questions they’re most interested in. So, over doing this for five or six years, I noticed that there were these two questions coming to the top, no matter who I was talking to. I could be talking literally to the Catholic nuns, to the medical professionals, to the high school students, the same two questions. And those two questions were, what gives you hope? How do I have a conversation about this? Because I care about it, but I just can’t talk about it because I’m scared we’ll just have an argument or it’s just so depressing or whatever.
John: It’s polarizing also. It’s just polarizing.
Katharine: Very, polarizing, yes. I have heard from people that after they read the book, they do, they are able to, first of all, feel like there are solutions and we can make a difference and our future is up to us. It is not written in stone. We are not doomed. We have a choice. And that is an incredibly hopeful message in the real sense of the word hope. Not like, oh, I just bury my head in the sand and hope all will be well. It won’t be well. But If we fight and we do everything we can and we practice that relentless hope that a better future is possible, we can get there. That’s the first thing people are taking away, which is awesome. Especially with younger people, there’s a lot of eco-anxiety these days. A lot of my students come into the class saying that they’re just almost paralyzed with anxiety for good cause. What I say to them is, if you’re anxious about this, that means that you actually understand how bad it is. You actually get it. You are a normal person if you are worried about this. I mean It’s abnormal not to be worried about something that affects every aspect of human life on this planet.
John: All right.
Katharine: But If we are anxious without knowing what we can do about it, we end up being paralyzed by that anxiety. and so I’ve had people read the book. In fact, I can think of one young woman who, this was just amazing, she was so paralyzed with anxiety that she couldn’t even function. She dropped out of school. She couldn’t even really leave the house. Like she just couldn’t even function. Here’s the thing, her dad was a climate scientist.
John: Wow.
Katharine: So she knew how bad it was. Somehow, someone, I don’t think it was her dad, got her my book and said, you really should read this. I don’t know how she had the courage to do it because if I was being paralyzed with anxiety over something, I wouldn’t want to read anything more about it. She read the book and she said, this is the first step I needed.
John: Wow.
Katharine: And because of realizing that there is a better future so possible and there are things we can do to get us there, that was what she needed to start that journey herself. That’s the first takeaway. But the second takeaway I often have from people is they’re concerned about it, but they don’t know what to do. And in fact, across America, two-thirds of people are worried and only 8% are activated. And so the second thing I’ve gotten people saying from reading Saving Us is that now I finally know what to do. I just have to do something, anything, and just talk about it and share it with people. People I work with, people I’m neighbors with, people I walk the dog with, people I play on a sports team with, people I go to church with, people on the PTA at my kid’s school. You know, this school is doing this. Why don’t we try that at our school? This business is doing this. Why don’t we try this at our business? This, you know, we’re doing that in our neighborhood. Why don’t you try this in your neighborhood? So just starting to have these conversations together about what we can do, that is the first step that every one of us can participate in. And I just feel like it’s so encouraging to feel like we can do something, isn’t it?
John: It’s empowering. Two things. You mentioned that you speak a lot in this type of format. You actually don’t physically go to where the event is, but you do a lot of virtual speaking to big and large groups around the world. Since you have that kind of exposure and visibility, talk a little bit about he inequity in climate science around the world. Are we far behind here in the United States, comparatively speaking, to Japan or South Korea or Germany and France? Are we keeping up? Is there some form of consortium of climate sciences that work together across borders that are trying to harmonize the efforts that are going on around the world and get us to a better place faster? How does that work, given all the exposure that you have and the visibility that you have concurrent with the exposure?
Katharine: Yes, we scientists are highly collaborative and we’ve been working with each other around the world for decades.
John: That’s great.
Katharine: It is. And that has just increased as more and more of the data about this planet comes from satellites. Satellites are these eyes in the sky and they’re observing all around the whole planet. So in fact traditionally, a lot of our scientific knowledge in terms of our data and our scientists themselves, they come from Northern and Western countries because that’s where we have the university network. That’s where people have the ability to go to college or university. That’s where we have the big science agencies like the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and similar societies in Canada and Australia and the U.K. and Europe. But when you start looking at the lower income countries, it’s just really hard for people to get any type of education, let alone get to university, let alone have access to the facilities, the equipment, the computers, the labs that you need to really become a professional scientist. And even the data, let me give you an example. In terms of long-term weather stations, I work a lot with local data and so I use a lot of long-term weather station data. I live in Texas and we have as many long-term weather stations in Texas alone as there are almost in the entire continent of Africa. So there is a tremendous inequity in data as well as inequity in human capital, which is starting to be addressed through, like I said, satellites that give us data all over the world. But even with satellites, you want to ground truth it with ground data and you just don’t have the ground data in a lot of remote places in the world where there could be people living there who are very vulnerable. And it’s even more important to understand how those small farmers who, if their crop fails, they literally starve. It’s even more important to try to understand how climate change is affecting them, yet we don’t have the resources and the tools. So what I do is I develop high-resolution climate projections where we can look into the future and say, you know, in the city of Dallas or the city of Minneapolis or the state of Kansas or the corn growing area in Iowa, what will our corn yields look like in 20, 30, 40 years, depending on the choices we make today? What will flood risk look like in Minneapolis, depending on the choices we make today? What will heat waves look like in Washington, D.C.? What will sea level rise look like in Miami? But then what I do is, and this is, again, in a large part because I am not American myself and I spent a lot, you know, many of my young years growing up in South America, I always try to find collaborators in other countries where they don’t have these resources. And I try to develop the tools here, but I try to make sure the tools I develop could be applied anywhere in the world.
And then I try to apply them somewhere else.
John: Right. But that sounds a little bit also like you’re incorporating AI because you’re doing some form of predictive analytics in your work. So that kind of work that you’re saying is when you’re tracking that kind of long-term weather and then crop yields and stuff like that, that’s a form of predictive analytics that could be highly beneficial to everybody.
Katharine: Oh yeah. Now, we have been using advanced machine learning techniques for a very long time. And it’s also a lot of statistics too, as well as a lot of physics and a lot of physical relationships. And so there are definitely some ways in which the newer forms of AI, I mean, machine learning is obviously a type of AI, can help. But with a lot of earth data and AI experts will tell you this, we still, the really effective uses of AI is when you have tons and tons of input.
And so AI can find patterns in huge data sets that can help you be more efficient.
John: Got it.
Katharine: So with a lot of the earth science stuff, we don’t have the huge data sets yet.
John: Understood.
Katharine: So that’s why we have to use physics. All our climate models are based on physics rather than statistics and AI, because physics is the same here on earth as it is on, you know, an exoplanet or the other side of the universe. But then when we use all of these physics based models to understand our planet, what we’ve learned is the biggest source of uncertainty is actually us. It’s human behavior and AI can’t predict human behavior yet either.
John: That’s true. That’s very true. So that’s wonderful. So you’re creating models that not only are usable here in the United States, but it goes back to your heart and to your mission, your greater mission of environmental justice, you bring into areas that might not necessarily have the same type of tools available to them and availability in terms of folks like you who have put together these models. So that’s fascinating.
Katharine: Yes. And that’s actually exactly why I joined the Nature Conservancy as their chief scientist, because the Nature Conservancy, it started off in the US state by state by state. But now after about 75 years, the Nature Conservancy has expanded to 80 countries around the world. And everything we do is science based. It’s about the science for food and water and conserving biodiversity and managing resources. And so what we’re doing with the Nature Conservancy is exactly the same. We’re trying to figure out, okay, over in the grasslands in Kansas, they figured out that by doing this with their crops, they could sequester carbon in the soil, which acts as a fertilizer and also helps with climate change. So we’ve mapped the whole world. So we know what different ecosystems are the same all around the world. It’s like, oh, over in Mongolia, they have the same type of grasslands as we have in Kansas. So we work in Mongolia too. So maybe we should be doing the same technique that we figured out in Kansas. Let’s figure out if that works in Mongolia also. And so by taking these learnings, we might learn something through working in Cape Town, through water. Cape Town’s very short of water. And it turned out that invasive plants in their reservoirs were sucking up 30% of the city’s water. So by removing the invasive plants, all of a sudden you free up all this water as well as removing an invasive species, which you want to do anyways. So now in other places that are drought prone, one of the first things we do is say, okay, where are you getting your water from? Do you have any invasive species in your reservoir that you can remove first? So we can take these learnings around the world because we don’t have time to reinvent the wheel multiple times, but taking this sort of global approach to, if it works here, let’s scale it globally. That’s what the Nature Conservancy does.
John: So the counterparts, you’re in 80 countries now. So the person who’s running, who is the person in charge of Nature Conservancy Italy, for instance, is that the managing director there? Or is that the chief scientist of Italy? Or what’s their title? Just so I get a little understanding of that.
Katharine: That would be the managing director for each world region or state or country. But then every region has scientists embedded in them. So we have a thousand scientists.
John: I mean, you’ve got like, just from that position, that part of your career, you’ve got some of the greatest consortium fraternities of scientists in the world working on like-minded issues.
Katharine: Yeah.
John: That’s it. I mean, wow. So how often do you all meet or how often do you share information or get together virtually or otherwise?
Katharine: Well, we share information all the time. In fact, that’s one of my main jobs is to share information. And that actually is interesting where AI can help because we generate so much data, project reports, manuscripts, white papers, publications. And we have scientists who work in 50 different languages, but AI can translate things. So we’re looking, for example, at if you just train a large language model with only your inputs, you can say, what does the Nature Conservancy know about soil conservation? And you can just get all of our resources on what we’ve learned about soil conservation in whatever language it is that you speak. So that’s one example. And then every few years, not that often, but every I think it’s been five years, we do hold a global gathering of our science staff and all the top scientists at all the other conservation, biodiversity and climate organizations around the world. And so this time, though, it’s the first time since I’ve been the chief scientist. We used a piece of computer software called Troop, where we entered where everybody would be coming from to pick the lowest carbon location.
John: Wow.
Katharine: To minimize the carbon of the travel.
John: Which was where did you meet?
Katharine: Mexico City.
John: Wow, that’s…
Katharine: And then of course, we’re offering hybrid options. We’re recording everything. We’re reusing all the content and recycling all the content because you can’t afford to fly people around the world, you know, every year, like we just can’t be living like that anymore. But at the same time, we want to make sure that people are connected as much as possible. So we do a lot of regional gatherings, we do a lot of virtual gatherings. We think of every way possible to connect people, because that communication, that’s what starts all of the work that all of us do together as humans.
John: Wow, that’s just fascinating. You know, for our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Dr. Katharine Hayhoe with us. She’s a chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, also a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University. She’s the author of this wonderful book, ‘Saving Us’, which you can buy on amazon.com or any bookstore that you like to buy your books from. And you can find Dr. Hayhoe at the Nature Conservancy at www.nature.org. There’s so many parts of your life that we have to go into because your career is so broad. So let’s talk about some of these other things. And then we’ll go back to climate science a little bit. Talk a little bit about you being so solution oriented in giving action items for people to take action and make the world a better place and make a positive impact. Talk a little bit about what you and I were talking about before we started this conversation off the air, your founding of or co-founding of Science Moms.
Katharine: Yes. So what I’ve realized through talking to people, through having thousands of conversations with people all over the place is that, and this is going to sound really simple, but took me a long time to figure this out. I’m convinced that just about everyone, like I’m talking 99.99% of people already have every reason they need to care about how climate change is affecting the people or places or things they love and to advocate for climate action. So you do not have to be an environmentalist. You do not have to be a scientist. You do not have to be an activist. You just have to be a human, like we said. So, but so often we think people have to care for the reasons we do. So I get people still asking me, how do I make people care about X? Like, how do I make people care about nature? Well, I just saw a horrifying survey yesterday that said that 45% of Americans don’t spend time outdoors. And so I’m like, excuse me, if you’re going to try to get 45% of Americans to first of all, spend time outdoors, then care about nature, then fix climate change. I don’t think we’re going to do that in time. So rather than doing that, why don’t we figure out what they do care about? Like, for example, 90% of football fans don’t even attend games, but they care very much about football. So, you know, we’re having to shift football practices to earlier in the morning and later at night. Athletes are getting heat exhaustion, heat stroke. They’re having to put very expensive roofs on stadiums because they have to air condition them, which costs a lot more money, which contributes to the whole overall cost of that. You know, you can kind of go on and on about how things are being affected. I can tell you how the Olympics are being affected by climate change. I can tell you how fishing is being affected. I can tell you how the air that we breathe is being affected. So we really have to start with something we have in common, something that we already care about. And when we look around the world, I work with an organization called Potential Energy that they came from Madison Avenue and they used to do for-profit advertising. But one of the guys, his son took a class at university on climate change and he came home to his dad. He said, “dad, what are you doing to make the world a better place?”
John: Wow.
Katharine: His dad took that to heart and he decided he was going to devote his skills and talents and abilities to figuring out how to help people make that head to heart connection on climate change. So they surveyed people around the world to see why do you care? Like, what’s the, what are the different reasons why you would care about this issue? And they expected to see different answers in different places. Like I care because there’s such potential for green jobs in the future. And there is, or I care because my tax dollars are subsidizing one of the wealthiest industries on the planet, the fossil fuel industry. And that makes me angry. Or I care because, you know, my home or my business is being affected. And, and they found that people did care about these things, but they found that around the world, there was one answer that everybody tipped. And that one answer was, I care out of love and especially love for my children or for the next generation. So when I heard that, I was like, okay, I am a mother. A big reason I care is because of that. I would do anything to give my child a better future as most of us who are parents would. And so why don’t we, those of us who there’s many of us who are parents who are climate scientists, in fact, I would say probably most climate scientists are parents. So I got together with a number of my colleagues who are also mothers and climate scientists, and we connected up with potential energy who did this survey to show that love, especially if the next generation is the most powerful motivator. And they helped us create science moms, which is an organization of rigorously nonpartisan scientists and mothers who want to equip other parents with the information they need to be effective advocates for their kids’ future.
John: Wonderful. And how long ago did you guys form this? Did you all form this?
Katharine: We formed it about two years ago, and it is going strong. You can find it online at sciencemoms.com. And in fact, right now, we are really taking aim at how extreme weather is affecting our kids, their health, and their future. So often we think of extreme weather events as acts of God, but what they actually are these days is their acts of man. I mean, we’re the ones making them worse. The hurricanes are stronger, the heat waves are more intense, the heavy rainfall is more frequent, the wildfires are burning greater area. We’re the ones who are loading the dice against ourselves, and it’s putting all of us at risk, especially our homes, the places where we live, the air our kids breathe. And so nobody has extra time, especially not mothers. Nobody has any extra time to do their research and read the scientific reports. So we just want to provide fact-based information in short sound bites that people can be like, aha, that’s why this matters. That’s what I can post on social media. That’s what I can share with my friends or my colleagues or my kid’s school. And that’s what I can say to my local city council person or to my local state representative, people who are making decisions in my organization, my place of work. I can say this is why it matters and this is why we need to do something about it. We want to equip everybody to be able to have those conversations.
John: Concurrent with science, mom. So we’re going to put all these great organizations in the show notes for our listeners and viewers. You also created Talking Climate. Talk a little bit about how you came up with Talking Climate.
Katharine: So in my book, ‘Saving Us’, I have all these stories about how to have conversations about climate change, how to connect over a shared love of food or beach vacations, or I’ve even had conversations over how we both like to knit. So there’s so many ways that we can start these conversations. But after, yeah, seriously, I’m not going to tell the knitting story though. You have to read the book. It’s a good one though. So after that, people would say, well, you know, I love all those stories, but I need more because, you know, you wrote that book and now isn’t, aren’t there more good news stories happening every day? So I started two years ago, I started a newsletter called Talking Climate and I committed to doing it weekly, but I was worried I might run out of good news because, you know, you think on climate change, like how much good news is there? So every week I had good news in green at the top of climate solutions that are already happening or that we’ve discovered would be great that we could do. Then next I have in red not so good news, but not about the polar bears or the ice sheets, but not so good news about our food or our health or, you know, things that matter to us. Like I’ll just give you a recent example. It turns out the breathing in the air pollution from burning fossil fuels, it decreases the effectiveness of IVF by a factor of five. And I mean, if you know anybody who’s ever gone through IVF, it is grueling.
John: It is grueling.
Katharine: It is a long, painful, heart wrenching process. And knowing that there’s something that actually makes it five times less likely. I mean, if that does not light a fire under you, I don’t know what does. So that’s just one example.
John: Right.
Katharine: But it’s in red because sometimes we feel so overwhelmed with not so good news, we just want to skip it. So you can just skip it. In fact, I’ve had people in the newsletter be like, can you just make it like a pop down menu so I don’t have to, and I’m like, well, MailChimp doesn’t let you do that. But if it did, I would.
John: Right I get it.
Katharine: And then at the end, I have in blue what you can do. Every week there’s something you can do. And so I started doing that, like I said, just over two years ago, and I was worried I was going to run out of good news. And so I started hunting down good news and I hunt for it actively. I look for it on social media, I look for it in the news, I train my Google News algorithm, I follow a bunch of websites that are all about good news. Back two years ago, there weren’t a lot, but now there’s actually quite a few. I found about five or six I love. And now I have to tell you, I’m like sneaking two, three, four things into every newsletter. So this is just phenomenal. And it just encourages you to feel like that giant boulder of climate action, it’s not sitting at the bottom of a steep cliff with only a few people trying to push it, it’s not budging an inch. It’s already up here at the top of the cliff, it’s already rolling down the hill in the right direction. It’s already got millions of hands on it. And if I add mine, and if I use my voice to encourage others I work with or live near to add theirs, it’ll go faster. Who doesn’t want that?
John: That’s incredible. And we’re going to put that in the show notes as well. And as if you don’t do enough, so Talking Climate, Science Moms, the professorship, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, you also host a PBS digital series called Global Weirding. Can you please share what Global Weirding is? And what was your aha moment to come up with this series?
Katharine: Yes. So a number of years ago, I was standing in line after church to pick up my son from Sunday school. And the man behind me, we were just waiting because Sunday school was going a bit long. And the man behind me said, do you mind if I ask you a question? So I was like, well, sure. I mean, we’re not going anywhere. What do you want to know? He said, and this was in West Texas in the city of Lubbock, that’s where Texas Tech is, which a few years previously had just won the Weather Channel’s competition for the wildest weather in the country.
John: Oh, wow.
Katharine: So Lubbock, Texas won over Caribou, Maine, Fargo, North Dakota, and Fairbanks, Alaska. Lubbock won. So this is the context. So he said, do you feel like our weather is getting weirder? And I thought about it. I thought, well, I know because I look at the data that even though we have the weirdest weather in the country, apparently, or the wildest weather, I know that our heatwave season is starting earlier in the year, and our heatwaves are stronger and they’re more intense and they’re lasting longer. I know that our rainfall, which has always been very variable, it’s getting stretched in both directions. Our heavy rainfall is more intense, and then our droughts are longer and stronger in between. I know that now, actually, just this past January, we had the biggest wildfire ever recorded in Texas, in West Texas. I know that hurricanes are dumping a lot more rain. They’re not more frequent, but they’re bigger and stronger, and they dump a lot more rain. So I said, yeah, actually, I do think our weather is getting weirder. That’s a good way to put it. And he said, I knew it. He said, I’ve lived here for 30 years, and I could tell that something was different. So I was like, oh, I think you might be onto something there. So about that time, our local PBS station, KTTZ, which is on campus at Texas Tech, they said, PBS National wants to start doing these new digital series on YouTube. And so we were thinking, what better to talk about in West Texas than weird weather and climate change?
John: Wow.
Katharine: And I was like, yes, if we can talk about it in West Texas, we can talk about it anywhere. So that’s where the idea of Global Weirding came from. It’s a series of short videos. We did three full seasons. And now, it’s been a couple of years, I’m thinking of actually restarting and updating them, and maybe even developing some curriculum, because I’ve heard that a lot of people are using them with their kids and in the classroom, too.
John: Well, you know, I grew up in New York City, Katharine, but I live in Fresno now. And this was the hottest summer ever recorded in Fresno’s history. I mean, there were more days, I don’t know the exact number, of 110 or more this summer than ever before. It’s just nuts. I mean, it’s, we really have, the weather has gotten much weirder. That’s for sure.
Katharine: Yes.
John: So people, I want to give, we’re going to give the link in the show notes to Global Weirding to watch those three seasons, because it’s all online and it’s accessible. So I want to make sure that we get that in the show notes as well. Talk a little bit about balancing your life. You know, you’re a professor, you’re also the chief scientist, but you also, you know, like you’ve referred to, you’re human to start with, and you’re also Christian. Talk a little bit about your faith and how your faith has not only influenced your life and your journey, but also your mission and how it interrelates with everything that you do that we’ve talked about today.
Katharine: Well, thank you for the way that you put that, because that is exactly the case. The reason why I specifically study climate change is because of my faith.
Because I truly believe that if, and I mean, Jesus even says this to his disciples in the Bible, he says, you should be recognized by your love for others. And I’m very sorry to say that that is not what Christians are recognized for these days, at least people who call themselves Christians. But rather than being a political Christian, this is a whole different topic.
But in the US, it’s really interesting how evangelical has become a political term rather than a theological term. And surveys show, for example, that 40% of people in the US who self-identify as evangelical don’t go to church.
John: Wow.
Katharine: So you’re like, well, where, where are they getting what they believe from? And they’re getting it from their political ideology, not from the Bible or any theology.
Anyway, that’s a different topic. But for me, being a theological Christian, what the Bible says is quite important to me. And I truly believe that we are to love others. And how loving is it to just sort of bury our head in the sand and ignore or dismiss the suffering that is already happening today. I mean, I talked earlier about air pollution and IVF, but around the world, the air pollution, the particulates produced from burning coal and gas and oil, they kill almost 9 million people a year. That’s already happening. That’s about the same number that died the first year of the COVID pandemic, except it’s happening every year. And nobody knows that statistic. And that isn’t even climate change. That’s just the air pollution. You add in climate change. And let’s just look at sea level rise alone. Two thirds of the world’s biggest cities are located within just a few feet sea level. 700 million people live in the low elevation coastal zone. Many of those people do not have the financial resources to pick up and move somewhere else. And in fact, most of their food and their resources come from that coastal zone. And we’re looking at at least a few feet of sea level this century if we don’t get our act together. I mean, the magnitude of the human suffering when you look at the heat, you mentioned in Fresno is the warmest summer on record. When we look at some of the heat that they’re hitting in the Middle East and Iran and Iraq, I mean, they’re hitting the and even in India, they’re hitting the upper level of what the human body can actually tolerate. I mean, the suffering is just, the potential for suffering is unimaginable. And the suffering that’s already happening today is something that we just aren’t even conscious enough about. So for me, this, this really is a way to live out my faith, to connect who I am and what I care about to why this matters. And what I found is people I talked to around the world, again, whether we’re Christians, or belong to another major religious tradition, or even as one of my colleagues once said, I remember, he asked if we could have lunch at a conference. And I didn’t know why. I mean, often we, you know, we scientists just get together and talk about new projects. And I still remember, I tell the story of a book, I showed up at the restaurant, and I was literally, I hadn’t even quit sat down yet, like, I don’t think that my bum had actually touched the seat. And he’s like, “I’m not a Christian. But I care about climate change, too. I care about the people, poor people who are being affected.” I was like, Oh, my gosh, I never thought that you didn’t.
John: Right.
Katharine: Yeah, so when all of us sort of connect the dots to why this matters to what’s in our hearts, again, to care about this issue, you don’t have to be any particular type of person, you just have to be a genuine, basic, caring human being who lives on planet Earth. And most of us, thank goodness are that. And when we connect those dots, we realize that we’re the perfect person to advocate for climate action to take all the tremendous skills and talents that we’ve been gifted with to use those to make the world a better place for not just ourselves and our families and the next generation, but for everyone around us, too.
And honestly, don’t we all want to be part of that?
John: Amen. I don’t know. I mean, you said it so perfectly. And it’s really the truth. Who doesn’t want to breathe cleaner air, drink cleaner water and leave a better environment for our children and grandchildren? Who doesn’t? We could do a whole another episode on the de-churching of America. I’d love to talk with you about that at a whole another time, because that itself is a fascinating phenomenon. How do you, seriously, you’re so accomplished and you’re doing so much important work, important work that is part of the greater changing of the world for the better. How do you decide how to spend your time every day in terms of making sure your family’s taken care of and you yourself are taken care of in terms of self-care, but also you’re keeping up with your professorship, your role as the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, and also your newsletter and now maybe even the rebirth of global weirding and being an author. How do you, talk about your personal habits and rituals that keep you both sane, grounded, but also evolving in what you want, the missions that you want to accomplish?
Katharine: That is a great question and it’s one that I ask myself constantly. I set regular times for myself to evaluate what I’m doing, to look at my priorities, to again maybe spend less time doing this or more time doing that. It’s really important to look at what we’re doing, look at the outcome of we’re doing, and sometimes you can’t measure it. So yo know as a teacher, I know that it could be somebody I taught years ago and something I said in class that I didn’t even know registered with and stuck with them and led to who they are today. So you can’t assess what you’re doing by the numbers, but you can look at the intersection of what needs to be done, what I am particularly good at, and then this one’s really important, what gives us joy. Right there in the middle, that will shift over time, but I feel like that’s our sweet spot. What needs to be done, because there’s plenty to be done, what I’m good at, don’t waste time doing something that’s not your thing. There’s other people who can do that. There’s lots of other people who can do that, but then what gives you joy is so important. To that end, I’m really convinced that climate action includes spending time doing the things you love in the places you love with the people you love, because that’s what charges our batteries. We’re fighting for the people, the places, the things we love, and if we don’t spend time enjoying them now, what energy will we have to fight to preserve them in the future? So that is just such an important part of my life, to spend time with my family, doing the things I enjoy, connecting with friends. For me, I find it very re-energizing to spend time outside in nature, and you know there’s medical science that even says that after you’ve been outside for 15 minutes, your brain chemistry changes, the inflammation in your body goes down. There’s all kinds of things that happen to you when you spend time in nature, but I just enjoy it, because that’s my happy place. Especially in the water, on the forest.
John: Green therapy is real. They say blue therapy is real. Looking at water bodies, and also like you said, green therapy of forests and grass, and the beautiful world that we have out there. I think you’re so right. You know doc, I could spend hours more talking with you. You’re a busy person. I just want you to know, first of all, thank you for all the work you do. I’ve been doing this show 17 years, and it’s just such a blessing to know there’s great human beings like you out there that are working on some of the biggest, if not the most important problems that we have that exist to all of us as humans around the world. So thank you for all that work. Thank you for your time today. This was a lot of time I took up, but one thing I’d like to do is invite you back on the show. You know, as we know, the journey goes on. There’s really no finish line. So at some point in the future, either when you launch when relaunch Global Weirding, or you come out with a follow-up to this beautiful book here, ‘Saving Us’ I want you to know you’re always welcome back on the show. You don’t have to spend an hour and 15 minutes next time. You can just spend a little time and share one of the great updates and something special you were working on that you’re really proud of. But for all listeners and viewers out there, to then find Katharine Hayhoe and at The Nature Conservancy and her colleagues there, please go to www.nature.org. She’s of course also a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University. And of course, ‘Saving Us’, which you can buy on amazon.com or any great bookstore close to you. Talking Climate, Science Moms are all going to be in the show notes. Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, you’re just a joy and a blessing for all of us. Thanks again for your time and thanks to you, for making the world a better place.
Katharine: Thank you for having me, John. This has been such a pleasure and let’s definitely do it again.
John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.
Talking Climate
https://www.talkingclimate.ca/
Science Moms
Saving Us (book)
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Saving-Us/Katharine-Hayhoe/9781982143848
Dr. Hayhoe’s TED Talk
Family Talk with Dr. Andrew Farley on SiriusXM
https://familytalktoday.com/ministryaudio/andrew-farley-ministries