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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We're very happy to have with us now one of the world's leading climate scientist, who is also one of the world-leading climate communicators across ideological lines. Katherine Hayhoe is chief scientist with The Nature Conservancy. She's an atmospheric scientist by training. Across various divides, she is a Canadian who now lives in Texas, and she is an evangelical Christian.

Katherine Hayhoe has a new book called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. It's interesting too, in the context of the global climate talks taking place at the UN General Assembly this week, and the UN's Climate Summit coming up in a few weeks. Dr. Hayhoe, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian: Let me just jump right in on one premise of your book, that to talk across political lines on the issue of climate change, it's better to focus on shared values and other common ground. Are there shared values when it comes to the politics of climate change and the audiences that disagree on it?

Dr. Hayhoe: On the politics, there might not be, but on the fact that we are all humans, there definitely are. We can connect over the fact that we're both parents and we want a better future for our kids. We might connect over the fact that we want a healthy economy where we can get jobs. We want a safe place to live, we might really enjoy something like tennis, or jogging, or I've even started conversations over knitting or wine.

The Rotary Club, the Lions Club, a shared faith, or sometimes even politics because questions of energy independence and free-market climate solutions, those are there, and they can be very powerful in motivating people when the issue is reframed to align with their values as opposed to counter to their values, which so often it is today.

Brian: For people in our New York listening area, for example, who may have a certain starting point and what they think about evangelical Christians, or what they think, can you talk about your own evangelical Christianity and how it's consistent with being an evangelist for taking climate change seriously?

Dr. Hayhoe: Yes. I'm originally from just over the border. I'm Canadian and it wasn't until after I moved to the States, which I did for graduate school, that I even clued into the fact that Christians had a problem with climate change because if you read the actual Bible, and my personal definition of an evangelical is someone who takes the Bible seriously. I realize today the definition of an evangelical in the US is typically a political party or a political position.

If you just read the Bible, it says at the very beginning that God gave humans, all humans, responsibility over every living thing on this earth, and then at the very end of the Bible, it says, God will destroy those who destroy the earth. Then in between, you've got all kinds of things about caring for other people. The most marginalized, and vulnerable, and poor are the most affected by climate impacts. If you take your faith seriously, I truly believe that you'd be out at the front of the line demanding climate action instead of dragging your feet at the back.

Brian: Your book is called Saving Us. Is there a purposeful Christian implication there like as in being saved?

Dr. Hayhoe: The title is almost slightly sacrilegious from a Christian perspective, but it is more reflecting on this. We're often asked and told that we need to save the planet as if the planet is somehow other than us, but the reality is this planet will still be orbiting the sun long after we're gone. It's we who are at risk. It's our civilization. After the polar bears, we are next, and our future is in our hands. The science is clear. We still have the ability to save us, but only if we act.

Brian: Do you cringe when you hear environmentalists say, "Save the planet," because you want to scream, "No, no, that's not the right message. It's we're saving people."?

Dr. Hayhoe: I actually do a little bit because, for a long time, I viewed climate change as an environmental issue that environmentalists care about, and the rest of us wish them well. Saving the planet is a worthy goal, don't get me wrong, but it's not one that I myself personally identified with. I cared much more about people who are suffering today, about the injustices that are occurring in the world right now.

Just speaking for my own values, when I realized that climate change was a justice issue, that climate change disproportionately affects women and children in poor countries, it affects brown and Black neighborhoods right here in Texas where I live, it disproportionately affects Indigenous people who have already lost so much of their land and their rights. When I realize that climate change is so unfair, that's when I decided I have to do everything I can to help fix it.

When we make this a niche issue, when we make it only about the planet, not about anything else that's already at the top of people's priority list today, which could be their kids, their family, their job, the place where they live, we're losing out on connecting this issue to every single person on this planet. Because when you all get down to it, we live here. This is our home. This is the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat and the materials we use to make our homes and everything we have.

To care about climate change, you only have to be one thing, and that one thing is a human living on planet earth. If we can make that connection, then we all of a sudden realize, "Hey, I'm already the perfect person to care." That's how we move the needle.

Brian: Listeners, anybody have a story from your own life about trying to talk across ideological lines about climate change, and getting through to somebody, or not getting through to somebody? Tell us your story or ask a question, maybe even advice from Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist, and renowned climate communicator. Her new book is called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. By the way, did you choose to live in Texas explicitly to put yourself in the position of having climate conversations across the political divide?

Dr. Hayhoe: I did not. It was one of those serendipitous events where it was my husband who the university was recruiting and I was the plus one, but when you look backwards, you realize that this was exactly the perfect place for me to be. Because living in one of the most conservative cities in the United States, home of the oil and gas industry, but at the same time, a place that's incredibly vulnerable to climate impacts, it's the perfect place to have conversations and trust me, I've had a lot of them that failed spectacularly.

If you're listening and you're like, "She does not understand," believe me, I have been there. I have had those conversations that ended so terribly that you even cringe today when you think about them. I took those conversations, and I learn from them, and I started to turn them around.

In my book, I have so many examples of conversations that have started over something as simple as the fact that we both love going to the beach, or we're both farmers, or we both are concerned about the future of our city, or our town, or our lakes. Those conversations that begin with something we agree on, rather than beginning as so many often do today, on something we disagree on, those conversations can go farther, and those conversations can really make a difference because here's something really crazy, Brian, how has the world changed before?

When we look at the way the world has been in the past, with huge issues like slavery, and civil rights, and women's rights, the world has changed profoundly and it wasn't when a president decided it had to. It was when ordinary people said, "This is not right. This is not the way the world should be. The world can and must change," and they started to use their voices. That was the first step in knocking over the first domino in a long chain that eventually changed the world.

Brian: I see you say there will be a collective awakening, an "Oh, sh--" moment as the New Yorker quotes you saying, I'm not sure if that's in the book, but I guess like many other environmental awakenings that came when something really dramatic happened like the cancer in Love Canal, New York putting toxic waste on the map, that cancer cluster in the 1970s, or a river catching on fire in Cleveland back then, helping to launch the 1970s environmental movement, that sort of thing?

Dr. Hayhoe: Yes. I did not put that exact phrase in the book the "Oh, blank," moment, but I and other scientists are really afraid that we won't take action at a scale large enough to fix this problem until we hit that global, "Oh, crap," moment. With climate change, if we wait until then, it is too late. It's like not stopping smoking until you have lung cancer. We climate scientists, are like the physicians of the planet. We have already done that scan, we have determined what's happening. We know why. We've been studying this for 200 years and that's how we know it's now not a natural cycle, it's not a volcano, it's not the sun, it really is us, and we've been so worried about the impacts that we first warned.

When I say we, I wasn't even alive back then. Scientists first warned the US president of the risks of climate change in 1965 and that president was Lyndon B. Johnson. We, scientists, are really worried that people are not going to take this seriously enough. A big part of that is because it has been framed as a planet issue, an environment issue rather than a human issue that every human already has every reason they need to care about.

Brian: Could this summer's intense weather, the floods in the east, and the drought and fires in the west, and things are going on in other countries, too, be that, "Oh, crap," moment?

Dr. Hayhoe: Well, it's certainly heading in that direction. Last year I did a study with colleagues at Yale University where we tracked 20 years of public opinion on climate change. We compared that to where they'd had heat waves, and droughts, and floods, and wildfires. We found that hot, dry extremes, like really hot droughts when it isn't raining, it's burning hot outside, they had changed people's opinions in the past.

Anecdotally, we know that the number of people now who are alarmed or concerned about climate change in the US are well over 50% of the population. I think that's because we've been breathing in the choking air from the wildfires, and we've been experiencing the floods in our own basements, in our own towns and cities, but now is the time to act. We can't just sit there and wait and say, "Oh, that was bad luck. Hope it doesn't come back again."

Climate change is loading the weather dice against us. We already have three sixes and a seven on our dice, and the time to act to cut our carbon emissions, to invest in nature to soak up that carbon forest, too, the time to act is now, before we get an eight on the dice,

Brian: Here's a caller, Soren at Rutgers University, who says he's a pastor's son. Soren, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Soren: Thank you. First time caller, I guess long time listener. I've been a pastor's kid for 20 years and I recently stepped away from the faith because of my reckoning with the impact climate change and how my church community has really exiled our world. Mostly because the question on their mind that they struggle with, I think, is the idea that in Revelation, the idea that God is going to bring a new world, and a new earth, and essentially abandon this one. My question is how can we defend climate change when so many people believe that, that there's no use in trying to fix anything if it's just going to be thrown away.

Dr. Hayhoe: That is a great question. In fact, that is the second most popular religiously sounding objection that I hear. The first one being, if God is in control, how could humans affect something as big as this planet? These are so popular and so endemic that I even made a Global Weirding episode about them. I have a YouTube series I do with PBS called Global Weirding. What Does the Bible Say About Climate Change is the second most popular episode.

To tackle that question though, I don't go to the science. I go actually to what the Bible says, because that's where the argument is coming from, they think, but humans were humans 2,000 years ago. In the City of Thessaloniki, who Paul writes to in the book of Thessalonians, he had people who were quitting their jobs and sitting around saying, "The world's going to end anyway, so why do we care?"

The Apostle Paul being who he was, he didn't mince his words. He basically said, "Get off your rear, get a job. Feed your family, care for the widows and the orphans." Then later he goes on to say, you don't know when the world's going to end. We don't, scientifically, we don't, and spiritually, we don't. You don't know when the world's going to end, but you have something to do right now. You are supposed to be, in the words of Jesus, recognized by your love for other people.

How different would this world be if Christians were recognized by their love for people instead of for their judgementalism, their political ideology, they're infighting and they're outfighting. If we really take the Bible seriously, and I would encourage you to check out a great organization called Young Evangelicals For Climate Action. They're over 20,000 around the country who are picketing, and petitioning, and demanding climate action, clean energy standards, at not just their schools, but their cities, their states, and in front of the White House as well. I think they're living out their faith. If anybody believes otherwise, I would just say, read the Bible.

Brian: You remind me of a joke I heard from my Jewish tradition that a guy is stranded in a boat out in the sea and is afraid he's going to drown, but he's a very religious man. A cruise ship comes along and says, "Would you like to come on our ship and be saved?" He said, "No, God's going to save me. I have faith." Then somebody comes along in a low flying helicopter and throws him a rope and says, "You can be saved. We'll take you up in our helicopter." He says, "No, I'm a man of faith. God's going to save me." The guy dies and he goes to heaven, and he sees God. He says, "God, I had faith in you, but you let me drown." God says, "I sent you a helicopter in a cruise ship, what do you want?"

Dr. Hayhoe: That is so true. In fact, I've even seen a variant of that, showing what I would call a political evangelical getting to heaven. Political evangelicals, being those of us whose statement of faith is written first by our politics, and only a very distant second by what the Bible actually says. If the two come into conflict, they will go with their politics over the Bible, in conflict with the Bible. It shows somebody like that, getting to heaven and saying, "God, why didn't you save us from climate change?", and God saying, "You idiot. I sent you the scientists."

Brian: Exactly. I'd like to play you a clip, two, if we have time, of President Biden in his UN speech this week where he talks about climate. Here's one.

President Biden: When we meet the threat of challenging climate, the challenging climate we're all feeling already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather, or will we suffer the merciless march of ever worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heat waves, and rising seas?

Brian: How would you grade that as a climate communicator?

Dr. Hayhoe: I would grade that pretty high. He was eloquent. He used words that sort of evoke strong images. It is absolutely true scientifically. Sea level is rising. Hurricanes are getting stronger. Wildfire is burning greater area. They're more intense. Our flood risk is increasing and heavy rainfall with it. He is definitely talking about what's happening, but we have to connect it.

We must connect it to our hearts. We must talk about our homes that are flooded. We must talk about our crops that are lost. We must talk about the air that our children are breathing that is filled with wildfire smoke that is incredibly dangerous for their lungs. We have to connect these issues to what's already in our heart, because going back to the title of the book, it's not about to saving the planet. It is about saving us.

Brian: Here's Melanie in Brooklyn, who I think is being driven crazy by something that was not on that list that you just ticked off. Melanie, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Melanie: Brian, I am a huge fan. I love you so much. I listen to you every day, I'm so excited to be here.

Brian: Thank you. Good to have you.

Melanie: Okay. I'm an atheist, but I was raised Catholic, and I find this conversation to be so hypocritical and it's driving me crazy. According to your religion, God put us all on this earth purposely, along with plants and animals. Why are you not speaking about plants and animals? Humans caused this climate problem and animals have no voice in this. I don't understand, if you are spreading all of this sort of humanity first thing, like why animals not come into this at all for you?

Brian: Dr. Hayhoe?

Dr. Hayhoe: Thank you for sharing that and thank you for being brave enough to express that, too, because I know it's always hard to call in when you have something to say that's difficult. I want to just absolutely say I am not saying that I'm not talking about plants and animals. I regret that I hadn't mentioned that up until this point and I thank you for bringing that up.

I'm the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, which is the largest conservation organization in the world. It is dedicated to helping to protect 30% of land area and 30% of ocean area by 2030, because we live with nature and we are part of nature. We are not separate it from nature. If you dig into the book a little bit more, you'll see the nuance is saving us is pretty much every living thing on this planet, because climate is changing faster, not only than time in the history of human civilization. It's changing 10 to possibly as much as 50 times faster than between the last glacial maximum, the last ice age and now.

That means that trees cannot pick up and move fast enough to keep up with changing climate. Animals, attempting to move poleward, have their habitat fragmented, and they can't move across major highways, or corridors, or cities to get to where they need to be to adapt to the climate. We also know that coral reefs, which are the nurseries of the ocean, are being bleached by ocean heat wave events, and by a lot of the carbon dioxide we're producing, going into the ocean.

It really is going back, and in the book, actually, they have a great story about how I was talking with one of my colleagues. He said, "I'm an atheist, but I care, too." I said, "Obviously, you care, you're a human living on this earth." Every single one of us, no matter what faith we do or do not adhere to, we have every reason to care about this. As a Christian, when it says in the book of Genesis, and in the Judeo-Christian faith, it's the same text, humans having responsibility over every living thing, that is often actually interpreted the opposite way.

You said it's often interpreted as only meaning plants and animals and not caring for our fellow human beings, not having compassion on our fellow human beings, but I truly believe that every living thing really means that. It means human and non-human living species.

Brian: Melanie, thank you very much for raising that question. It was an omission that we had not said animals during this segment, yet. We're running out of time, I want to do a couple of things real quick. Let's sneak in one more Bible-reading climate-concerned person, Debbie in Lacey, New Jersey. Debbie, do you have a climate Bible study?

Debbie: Yes. Hi, I love your show, Brian, and thank you for taking my call. I wrote a book through the pandemic that I had always hoped to write for 10 years or more, about the environment. It's God's Good Earth: An Environmental Bible Study, which I self-publish. Then I started a group with people from my church and some friends, and there were about 10 of us that were meeting regularly and did 15 lessons all about the environment.

I came across quite a different variety of views from a person who, just as an example, when we talked about consumption in the US, and how much we consume compared to other countries, this woman believed that God gives us the blessings that we have, and we should not feel like we don't need so much. We are entitled to it, according to what God gave us, that was her view. That's one end of the spectrum. To the other end of the spectrum where the person who said that she has geothermal in her house, solar panels, special insulation, all energy-saving appliances, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian: Debbie, I have to jump in. It's a wonderful story, but we're going to lose the line to our guests in 60 seconds. Here's what I want to ask you in our last minute, as a climate communicator, do you prefer the term climate change, or global warming, or neither, and how about climate crisis versus climate emergency? There's a push to use the word emergency now.

Dr. Hayhoe: I would say it's global weirding, because that's what we're experiencing in the places where we live is just getting weirder and it is a crisis. It is not going to be fixed immediately like you could in an emergency room. It is a crisis that requires long-term action, recognizing that we in rich countries, are responsible for the bulk of this issue. 3.5 billion poorest people produce 10% of the emissions contributing to this problem. It absolutely is a justice issue, and it's a human issue, and it's an issue for every living thing on this planet. That's why my book was called Saving Us, all of us.

Brian: All right, you go, because I know you have to be on another show in 60 seconds. I will say goodbye to you in absentia. Thank you so much for doing this.

Dr. Hayhoe: Thank you for having me.

Brian: Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist is now the author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. As she mentioned, she hosts the YouTube PBS podcast, Global Weirding.

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