[whooshing sound]
[dramatic music]
[applause]
Climate change is a serious challenge,
but it's not insurmountable.
We're stymied in getting to the solutions
because of an underlying challenge,
a communication failure rooted in language and ideology.
Some aspects of this failure are inadvertent and innocent,
like how some scientists communicate.
Others are intentional and insidious,
like the active disinformation campaign.
Other aspects involve ingrained world views.
Resolution of this communication failure is essential,
as it can unleash our ability to solve the climate problem.
My thinking's evolved over the 25 years
that I've been working in climate change communication.
When I first started working with climate scientists,
I realized that people
had a hard time understanding some of them.
I'd say, it's going to get a lot warmer,
and how much depends on our emissions,
and they'd say, mathematical model simulations
have both explicitly resolved in parameterized properties
suggest a range of global means surface air temperature perdivations
depending on assumptions about anthroprogenic emissions
and their radiated forcings.
Further research is required.
Did you get all that?
So I figured if I could just help them
translate science into English, people would get it,
and then we could get on with solving the problem.
Of course that assumed
that if people just understood the problem,
we'd act to fix it.
Turns out, that's not the major issue.
But, communicating science to the public,
it involves a number of things:
simple, clear messages in plain language,
repeating them often, and communicating using stories,
because they're sticky and memorable.
But scientists' training teaches them to use jargon,
and include all the details and caviats right up front,
never repeat what's already known,
and the data speak for themselves,
there's no need for stories.
You can see the problem, scientists are from Mars,
the public's from Venus, but just like men being from Mars,
and women being from Venus, this doesn't mean
that they don't love and trust each other.
Just that sometimes a little communication help is needed.
Besides jargon, I realized that scientists
used a lot of words that the public also used.
They just used them to mean entirely different things,
and no one had ever recognized this.
So for example,
scientists often use the term, positive feedback.
Which, to most of us sounds like a good thing, right?
You do a good job, you get positive feedback,
but scientists use the term positive feedback
to describe a vicious cycle in the climate system,
whereby warming causes even more warming
so the process feeds on itself, it's not positive.
And when scientists describe the possible ranges
around a particular measurement or projection,
they call those ranges, error bars,
but to the public, error just means wrong.
I think when I retire I'll open a tavern for scientists,
I'll call it The Error Bar. [audience laughter]
I've identified 150 of these words
that mean entirely different things to scientists
than they do to the public.
I've been talking about them for decades.
I've even published papers about them.
I worked with my scientist colleagues
on lots of other issues, in language and communication.
We developed effective metaphors
and they became better storytellers.
We designed graphics that people could actually understand,
and all of these efforts have been really worthwhile.
Some scientists are always good communicators,
and many more have joined their ranks.
Scientists have now clearly communicated
that we know that the world is unequivocally warming,
and we know the cause.
We've increased the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere by more than 40%
through our dependence on coal, oil, and gas.
And we're seeing the impacts now
in longer, hotter heatwaves,
in rain coming in heavier downpours,
and our coastal cities beginning to feel the brunt
of encroaching seas, and there's a lot we can do about it;
both to reduce future climate change
and to deal with it's consequences.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree on all of this.
In fact, based on the evidence,
97% of climate scientists have concluded
that human-caused global warming is happening,
and scientists are not the only ones.
The U.S. military is very concerned about climate change.
They call it a threat multiplier,
because it exacerbates a range of risks to our security,
from the spread of infectious diseases,
to conflicts over resources and refugees.
So with the facts so clear,
how did we get into this communication crisis,
and why are we stuck here?
This is where the intentional and insidious
part of the problem comes in.
There is a well-organized, well-funded,
disinformation campaign, designed to confuse
and cast doubt on the science.
There have been many books written
documenting this campaign, including this one,
which details how big-moneyed interests
promoted a handful of scientists to obscure the truth
on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.
The merchants of doubt take advantage of language confusion,
like those words I mentioned
that mean different things to scientists
than they do to the public.
Take the word uncertainty for example.
The disinformation campaign exploits the fact
that the public use of uncertainty is,
we're really not sure what's going on,
even though scientists mean no such thing when the use it.
Scientists use uncertainty to describe the possible ranges
around a particular measurement,
like those error bars I mentioned.
And scientists use uncertainty to describe
the range of possible warming that we face.
A little more or a lot more depending on our emissions.
Scientists will call that the uncertainty range,
but we are as certain that human activity
causes global warming,
as we are that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
Or take the word theory.
Scientists use the word theory
to describe something that is very well-established in science,
and can be used to make predictions,
like the theory of gravity.
But, the public usage of theory is much different.
It's just a hunch or a guess. Just some theory.
So there are those who will exploit that
by repeating that global warming is only a theory.
Well next time you hear that remember,
gravity is only a theory too.
[audience laughter]
The disinformation campaign also misleads
with divisive rhetoric and false choices,
like pitting the environment against the economy,
as if we had to choose between them.
In fact, recent research shows
that the costs of climate change to the economy are huge,
so it's not just an environmental issue,
it's a economic one,
and while it will cost something to deal with,
it'll cost a lot more if we don't deal with it.
And the longer we wait to act,
the more expensive it gets.
So these are just a few of the ways
that the disinformation campaign
carries out it's intensive effort
to undermine public understanding
of the science and the solutions.
Which leads us to another communication issue.
The difficulty that some people have separating
the reality of the science of climate change
from how they might feel
about some of the potential solutions.
As I thought about the language that's often been used
to talk about solutions to climate change,
I realized that maybe it wasn't the science some people were rejecting.
It was how they perceived the solutions, so words like regulate,
restrict, cut,
control, conserve, and tax,
these are words that get some peoples' hackles up,
because they sound ideologically objectionable.
I've been pointing to this problem for a long time,
and a recent study supports my concerns.
Researchers at Duke University's business school
did an experiment with self-described
democrats and republicans.
All the participants in this experiment
heard the same science of climate change
and projections of the future,
but half of them heard that science
coupled with a free market solution and the other half
heard it coupled with a regulatory solution.
A majority of the democrats agreed with the science,
regardless of which solution set it was paired with.
Among the republicans, a majority also agreed
with the science when it was paired
with a free market solution.
But those republicans who heard the science
paired with a regulatory solution
were much less likely to agree with the science.
Now this is important information,
and it suggests a more productive way
to frame the solutions.
For example, pricing fossil fuels
to account for their real costs to society,
is a market-based way to drive energy innovation,
but if you call it a tax,
some people will be instantly alienated.
Now there are those who choose those words inadvertently,
but others, who want to stall action,
do it intentionally,
wanting to get peoples' hackles up.
Now another problem that we face
in the communication of climate change
is that some people just don't recognize
the immediacy and urgency of the climate change issue.
At a talk I gave recently, someone in the audience said,
"well we've been talking about this crisis for decades,"
and we're not on fire.
No? Tell that to people in the American west,
where the fire season's getting longer, and the fires larger
and there are clear connections to climate change.
Hotter, drier conditions, more insect-killed trees
and earlier melting of snow pack.
My questioners seem to be under the common misconception
that climate changes may be a problem for the future,
we'll cross that bridge when we come to it he said.
Oops. Going to be tough to cross that bridge.
We're seeing a lot more of this kind of flooding.
Due to the increasing trend in very heavy downpours,
and that's caused by warming,
because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.
All of these things are happening now.
The problem is, not everyone is connecting the dots,
between what we're experiencing,
and the human influence on climate.
And the media are not helping.
When wildfires were ravaging the American west
in 2012 and 2013,
the media spent a lot of coverage
on the fire fighting efforts,
but did they mention climate as a factor
in the increasing trend in wildfires?
Not so much.
Just 3% of the fire fighting coverage in 2012
and 6% of that media coverage in 2013
even mentioned climate change.
Now in addition to not connecting the dots,
the media, the media also give undue amounts of airtime
to contrarian points of view,
and in general, they just give
the topic of climate change short shrift.
The media may not tell us what to think,
but they tell us what to think about,
and it's not global warming,
and for many of us, when people do think about it,
they think of it as something far away,
like melting ice at the poles and polar bears.
Something that affects someone else somewhere else.
But it's happening here and now,
in our own backyards.
You know, the Arctic is the opposite of Las Vegas.
What happens in the Arctic, does not stay in the Arctic.
So that melting ice on Greenland,
what that means for us is sea level rise,
and water in the streets of coastal cities,
like New York,
and Miami, and New Orleans,
and Houston.
Houston, we have a problem.
So what can we do?
How can we take on this communication problem,
so we can tackle the climate problem?
Well one thing we can do, is we can change the language
that we use to talk about solutions to climate change.
We can use words like innovation, entrepreneurship,
American ingenuity and exceptionalism,
harnessing the power of the free market,
and rising to the challenge of competing
in the global clean energy economy.
These are things we can all support,
so we can get together,
and get on with taking the actions needed
to minimize disruptive climate change.
In addition to the words,
we can be more thoughtful about who is saying them.
We can identify and promote
trusted messengers for each audience.
This will help because we all tend to believe
what those who share our values believe,
and climate change, unfortunately,
has become part of the cultural divide,
that defines our identities.
As we work to change how we talk to each other
about global warming, perhaps we can bridge
that cultural chasm that's opened up
between us on this issue.
We can connect on values that we all share.
We all want a cleaner, healthier world, a vibrant economy,
a better future for our children.
None of us wants to leave our kids
with a problem they can't solve.
We need to create a conversation
around these shared values,
and around how climate change is affecting all of us,
and the things that we care about.
Where we live, and places we depend on,
for food, water, and other necessities.
And we need to avoid thinking
that this issue in insurmountable.
It's actually empowering to recognize
that we're the cause of climate change.
It's a man-made problem and it has man-made solutions.
We can take that empowerment,
and focus on the great opportunity that we're presented with
in the transition to a clean and prosperous energy economy.
We've made great strides recently.
The United States produced more power from wind in 2014
than any other nation,
and the price of solar power has come down so rapidly,
that it's now cost-competitive with conventional sources
across most of our country.
But other nations are moving even more quickly,
and producing larger shares of their energy with renewables.
The global race is on,
not only to deploy existing technologies,
but to invent and develop new ones.
Those who win the race to innovate
will profit in more ways than one.
The solutions to climate change are here
and available to us now,
and they offer such a wide array of benefits,
in addition to maintaining a livable climate.
Yes! The solutions, the benefits are so many,
it really will be a better world.
We just need to make it happen,
and that starts with how we talk about it.
Words matter, so it's time to change the words,
so we can change the conversation,
so we can change the world.
Thank you.
[audience applause]