This video comes to you in seven parts.
And we are going to cover a lot of ground here. If you can't tell this video is kind
of long. But in short, we're gonna talk about how does the world reduce its carbon footprint
- is it through large-scale structural and societal shifts? Or individual actions?
Who is we you ask? Well it is me and ClimateAdam who I am talking to via the interwebs.
Hey Adam, who are you and what do you do?
Adam: I talk about climate change, mostly climate science in quite a sort of playful,
youtubery way. So my goal at the beginning was to make videos that emulated my favorite
YouTubers, not necessarily educational YouTubers, but just kind of like harness this silliness
to talk about climate change.
And I started that while I was doing my, my PhD, which was in climate science.
And, um, I guess its been, oh God, maybe four years or so since I made my first video?
Miriam: Oh, before we go any further, I want to let you know that Adam and I put together
a sketch on his channel, which you can watch right [snaps] now.
I try to act? So you can be the judge of how well that went.
Okay, back to chatting.
Can I ask why you think that silliness is important?
Adam: Climate change is often, well, if not always, an intimidating topic. I think lots
of us are really scared of climate change, or we're just scared of being lectured about
climate change.
And so we end up not talking about it at all.
I think silence about climate change is one of the things that concerns me most about
it. And so by being silly, by being quite playful, I think it gives a lot of people
a way in to think about climate change and to talk about climate change when they wouldn't
normally.
I try not to aim the jokes at climate change - I'm not saying Climate Change is silly - I'm
saying that I am silly.
And using that as a way to try and, like, give a little window into talking about climate
change.
Miriam: So, speaking about climate change, in the world's best transition ever.
In the video on Adam's channel we're playing characters discussing what is a better way
to mitigate climate change? Individual actions - something you do in your daily life, or
structural changes - think government policy, industry overhaul, or cultural shifts.
Adam: Its interesting because I feel like there are two big debates in Climate Change.
There is the debate that happens outside the climate nerd world, which is the kind of false
debate about whether it is even happening.
But then if you're just are embedded in the climate nerd world, theres this big debate
about what kind of action, at least at the moment, there's this big debate about what
kind of action should take precedent.
Miriam: If we're speaking in broad strokes I tend to fall more on the side of pushing
for large-scale structural shifts whereas, Adam leans more toward individual actions.
Adam: I think for me, that is not because that is not because I don't think the collective
is important. I think it's fundamental we absolutely need it. But I can see we're not
doing that, it's very obvious we're not doing that.
And we've been not doing that for a while so, it's sort of in the same that some people
say charities are not a good thing - we need to get to a world where we don't need charity.
I sort of feel like yes, absolutely, we need to get to a world where we don't need charity,
but we don't have that world yet, so we still do need philanthropic organizations so people
don't starve to death or die of preventable diseases.
Similarly for climate change, absolutely we need structural changes, we're not getting
those at the moment so we need to cut our emissions in any way we can.
And I think pointing out the personal ways we can cut emissions is helpful in doing that.
Miriam: And from my perspective, my big problem with pushing for individual actions is often
how those recommendations are conveyed.
Because it often comes down, kind, kind of patronizingly. Like, hey, you need to change
your lifestyle because it's your fault that this is all happening. Which not only takes
the burden off the big players, that are the larger emitters, more, emitting more than
an individual person ever would.
But also, it ends up being kind of classist and racist a lot of times. I mean, I think
that's been a big problem of the environmental movement for the last like three decades,
four decades now.
What I see more often than not, is that the folks that are deciding what the individual
actions we need to do, are speaking from a place of racial and financial privilege which
makes it a lot easier to take those actions. All while they're simultaneously saying you're
a bad person if you don't take these actions, despite many individual actions being all
but impossible for a lot of people.
What's even more frustrating about that dynamic to me is that if you look at who are the biggest
emitters, it's the people that are wealthy, living in a colonialist nations, who have
the most capacity to choose not to fly, or buy that expensive train ticket or have the
time to figure out what emits the least but aren't because they are running the countries
and the companies that emit the most. And much of the every little bit helps conversations
aren't aimed at the big emitters.
That being said, I subscribe to many of the individual actions like I haven't eaten meat
in over a decade, I don't own a car.
Adam: Yeah, I think the idea of telling people what to do is, not something I have ever felt
comfortable with. What I've tried to do generally is speak about the things I've done in my
personal life, like why I've done them, how I've done them, or like, point out the difference
that certain actions can take.
But, I think you're absolutely right, people like me to be honest, often forget how lucky
I am to have enough flexibility in my life to make these changes in the first place.
I can choose to not really drive at all, like, I live in a city with good public transport,
I can afford to take the trains to places.
I had a job, so I live in London I should point out. I had a job recently in Berlin
and one in Poland. I was able to travel to both of these jobs by train and bus, which
not only proves how much flexibility I have in my time, but also, like, that was a more
expensive way to get there.
Miriam: I mean the other big thing that I think about is that as great as individual
actions may be, they're never gonna solve all of the problems.
So in the video on your channel I make a joke about taking over all the garbage trucks in
New York City and electrifying them. Other examples of things that no matter what I do
as an individual I'm not going to be able to change are:
How concrete is made and used, the energy efficiency of every truck on the road, or
how much electricity Amazon's servers use.
And there are loads of other things like that, consumer choice can only go so far.
Adam: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, there's some things that I'm not even able
to choose, you know, there isn't a climate friendly option on the market. So it's all
well and good saying "oh market forces will push these things into changing"
If there isn't an electric car you can buy or you just can't even afford the electric
car then that's not gonna help.
One thing that really stuck for me, um, was just after the Paris agreement and I was among
quite a lot of people who were quite surprised to see 1.5 degrees as the, like, ambitious
target of the Paris Climate Agreement.
I interviewed a climate scientist, Piers Forster, a UK-based climate scientists shortly after
that. And his response was just that the best understanding of the time showed that this
was still something that was possible and that was something that was really valuable
for us to achieve. But if we wanted to achieve it, we didn't have really any choices left.
If you could think of a way of cutting emissions you needed to do that, like, every single
thing you could think, whether it was changing power plants or changing how you fly or what
you eat, just absolutely everything we need to throw at the problem needs to be thrown
at the problem if we're going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
And there are some very good reasons why we should limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Miriam: n.b. see card linking to Adam's video about why limiting warming to 1.5 degrees
should definitely be our goal.
The one thing that also really worries me, though, about kind of putting that out into
the world is that so many of the things that I see people talking about - they're not going
to help, they might actually make it worse. And I feel like when we talk about climate
change, and we're doing climate communication it's walking this tightrope between what's
really catchy and people will remember and people will actually do, like what's sticky
and what actually works.
This like big push for local food: great for a lot of things, maybe not super great for
climate change.
Right now this huge discussion of straw bans, almost no impact on global climate, objectively
pretty bad for disable people, only mildly bad for the oceans.
Adam: It's like the plastic straw thing, but here in the UK we've got a 5 pence charge
if you buy a new plastic bag at the shop. And since that's happened, so many people
when they find that I work on climate change, and if I meet someone now or something, even
know they say, "oh cool, well, you know I reuse my plastic bags, like, hey, I'm helping
solve this thing."
And, in one way that's awesome that they're like doing something that they feel is valuable
and you know, they feel like its connected to this thing, but it sucks because it's not
really.
I mean that helps certain things, but that's not gonna help climate change at all.
Miriam: I think that's really, probably, where the individual verse structural argument breaks
down also, like, makes it kind of pointless in that the ones that become really popular
- the structural and individual changes, uh, that people can get really excited about because
they're easy to talk about they're easy to understand, you can put them on a bumper sticker.
Kind of things like that.
The impact compared to what we need to do.
Adam: I think its important not to be absolutists, as soon as we start saying to people, in order
to be good, you need to do X, where X is some total thing be that vegetarianism or veganism
or never flying. There's no room for conversation there, there's no room for the fact we all
lead different lives with different access to different things.
There's that phrase, I don't know where its from but "perfect is the enemy of the good"
which I think is really valuable for climate change, but also just for the quality of my
YouTube videos.
Miriam: In the video on your channel we do talk about, kind of very briefly what are
some individual and structural actions that people can and should do. We've kind of talked
about how changing your diet even if just slightly is great. What are some other kind
of things you can do in your daily life that you want to recommend people do.
Adam: I think a lot of them people know about as well, so like diet and transport are the
ones we talk about a lot. Apart from the obvious ones I think the thing that people don't talk
about that much and is so ingrained in everything we do, and I think you think about quite a
lot is stuff.
Like how just like everything we buy, all of the materials we buy, the cameras we've
got, our phones, our clothes, all of this uses energy, ends up emitting greenhouse gases,
and recycling, although it's okay, it's not you know, the end of the world to recycle
stuff it's so much better if we can reduce the amount we used in the first place.
And when we've got something that goes a a bit wrong, if it gets a hole in it, if we
can repair it and keep it going and just avoid buying a new phone just because it's a bit
chipped or like there's a brand new faster one.
Miriam: I also think that kind of dovetails pretty perfectly into one of my favorite structural
changes to talk about.
This is a big debate, and by big debate, I mean completely ignored but super important
debate that's happening in the US at least with right to repair laws and as our devices
get smaller and thinner companies do things to make it basically all one piece which makes
it very hard to repair it.
And they aren't releasing the abilities for third-party companies to make bits to swap
stuff out, so like, right now basically all I can do with the laptop that I'm talking
to you on is replace the battery after my warranty's overs and a couple of the other
parts but if the screen goes or like a part of the screen goes I have to replace the entire
top of this laptop.
With my phone, all I can really replace right now is the physical body outside and the battery
and the screen.
So fighting for some kind of right to repair law in your area while on their face don't
necessarily seem like a climate change law, in actually if enough places have these laws
on the books, the big Apples and Googles and Lenovos of the world are going to have to
change how they make their products and let third-party vendors repair them.
Which can help reduce how often we have to buy new laptops and new phones and keeps us
out of the planned obsolescence cycle.
Adam: There's some really amazing organizations I've heard about where you can go along and
they help you fix your stuff. I tried to replace the battery in my electric toothbrush... I
did successfully replace the battery in my electric toothbrush.
Also got three soldering burns in the process, um, so for people like me who are terrible
at this there are also like places you can go where they'll repair stuff.
The really depressing thing often is that it costs as much or sometimes even more to
repair things, um, than it does to just buy a new one.
And I often choose to repair even when it's a big more expensive to buy a new one. but
I understand that's something that I'm privileged enough to have the cash, I have the luxury
of choice.
I also try to buy things secondhand a lot - to like, increase the demand for secondhand
things and show that things have value after they use, well that's one of the reasons,
the other reason is just because I'm cheap.
Miriam: Yeah, I mean, when I first moved to New York, I just biked everywhere, um, and
I told myself it was because, while public transport is great, if you can - it still
uses fossil fuels so biking even better, and I am a physically able person so could bike
everywhere, but really it's because a monthly subway pass in New York costs more than a
hundred dollars and I already bought my bike so that was free.
Adam: You joke about it, but when you can find things which on a personal level benefit
people in multiple ways, like you can suggest something which saves someone money and time
and also coincidentally reduces the greenhouse gases emitted, it's like win win win.
Miriam: Wooof, this is by the far the longest public video I have on this channel so if
you made it this far, thank you for watching.
Thank you so much Adam for coming to talk to me on my channel. It was really great,
I learned a lot, had a lot of thoughts.
Adam: And if you'd like a taste of what exists on my channel then check out the video we
made over there, it's basically a super condensed much silier version of the conversation you've
just seen.
Miriam: I would love to hear from you all how you think about mitigating climate change.
Are you existing in this dichotomy between individual and structural shifts or are you
thinking in an entirely different way.
As always I will be hanging out down there in the comments. Feel free to stop by and
I hope you're having a wonderful day.
Adam: BYE!