I have spent a lot of the last couple weeks trying to figure out what to say
here on this channel because normally I like to make very positive and
optimistic videos. That's what I do here. And I was trying to figure out what
message to share with you guys that left you feeling hopeful, because that's just
the sort of optimist that I normally am, but I have been really frustrated, and
honestly just angry, and sad with this whole situation that we've been going
through. And I think it's not for the same reasons that most people are in - and
I want to start by saying obviously that I feel very privileged to be in a safe
place right now, and to be in a country that has health care.
I have financial security and honestly things are good for me. But what I'm
really frustrated about in this situation is the multiple layers of
denial that are taking place. It is mind-boggling to me and so I kind of
want to unpack that. I think that a lot of people, including a lot of people in
power, were completely in denial about the fact that a pandemic could happen
let alone that scientists and medical experts were saying that it was likely
to happen at some point, especially if we didn't have the right safeguards in
place. Which- no one no one was listening to them so of course this happened, this
was bound to happened if we didn't do anything to prevent it. That's
frustrating, obviously, but what's especially frustrating is that now
people realize that people are realizing that you know our governments weren't
listening to these experts, but no one seems to be talking about the fact that
no one is listening to climate scientists, and everyone is in denial
about the entire problem. And I mean everyone. I don't mean to
call you out on this, but the odds are that you're in that boat too. I was, back
when I was doing my Masters of Science in environmental science. I was studying
renewable energy, and I was deeply in denial about climate change. Now I'm not
saying that I didn't believe in climate change, I knew that
climate change was happening and I knew that humans were causing it. I've never
been in denial about that because the science is overwhelming. But I was in
denial about two things that are very important. One is just the sheer scale of
the issue. I mean it is probably a lot worse than you think.
It's really scary to say this, and even harder to to believe it, but climate
change is going to be way more deadly than COVID19 will be, and I don't
mean to underplay how serious the pandemic is (because it's a PANDEMIC!) and
we need to do everything that we can to make sure that as many people are safe
from it as possible. But climate change is gonna be a lot worse, and unlike a
pandemic climate change is not just gonna last for a year or two, it's going
to last forever. We're talking about a permanent change to the planet that we
really cannot undo, and it's just going to continue getting worse until we
actually do something. And then once we do fully stop emitting carbon dioxide
that change is just going to be with us for the rest of our time, like for the
rest of humanity. And we're not doing anything about it.
Facts often fail to get across to people when it comes to the climate but we're
probably looking at at least a four degrees Celsius rise in global
temperature by the end of the century, which could mean a billion climate
refugees around the world because people are going to be displaced from their
homes, because their homes will just no longer exist, because they're going to be
underwater, or because in a lot of the world it will physically be too hot for
people to live there. They will die because of the heat. There's going to be
perhaps 50% less of food as it becomes more difficult to produce food
in times of extreme droughts and flooding. And
there is going to be more diseases, by the way. I'm worried about the pandemic,
but there's going to be worse coming down the line. By 2050 scientists predict
they'll be over five billion people reckoning with the disease malaria.
There's a lot of studies that show that human aggression increases as places get
hotter, and when they're under stress such as food stress. We should expect we
should expect more violence in the future with climate change. Armed
conflict should increase by around 10 to 20 percent with every half degree of
warming, and we're going to expect several degrees of warming by the end of
the century. Carbon Dioxide levels could rise high enough to reduce human
cognitive capacity (our ability to think) by about 21%. I did a whole video on that
and that was a horrifying experience, to be honest. And if you add all of that up
from an economics point of view it's going to be way more costly, and could
result in a much larger global recession than we're seeing now with COVID19. So,
if you don't care about people and you just care about money this should be
your top concern. If any of this comes as a surprise to you then I recommend
reading the book 'The Uninhabitable Earth' by David Wallace-Wells.
It's truly shocking but I think everybody needs to read it, so please. So
during my Master's I was in denial about climate change - I was in denial about how
bad it was going to get. I honestly thought that we were making progress and
that it was going to be solved eventually somehow by someone and all I
needed to do was just keep doing the work that I was doing the research on on
renewable energy that I was doing and everything else would would be fine.
We've solved all sorts of problems in the past as humans and we're gonna solve
this one. That was generally my attitude. And I flew to a lot of conferences, and I
flew to take courses on the Bio-Economy. I flew a lot during my Master's. And I
was in denial about the level of impact
that that had, because it had a huge carbon footprint, and I also think that I
was really in denial about the fact that someone was gonna do something, and that
it was just gonna get solved. I mean we were making better and better solar
panels, and there were protesters that were protesting pipelines, I felt like we
were making progress but the fact is that if you add up all of the Carbon
Dioxide that humankind has ever emitted, half of that has happened in the last 30
years. In my lifetime, and that has all been since we've known about climate
change, so not only have we completely failed to reach our targets of carbon
reductions that we set in the Paris climate agreement, not only have we
failed to reduce our emissions, our emissions have actually grown steadily
every single year (with the exception of the 2008 financial crisis). So to make that
more clear, we are increasing our carbon emissions instead of decreasing them,
meaning that we're going in the opposite direction that we need to be going, and
we're speeding up. Back to this COVID19 crisis that we're in. So I'm seeing a lot
of people that are complaining about how their politicians are responding to the
issue, and how they're really shocked that this could have happened, that
no one was there to protect them from this happening, and that governments
weren't listening to scientists and academics on what could happen. No one
was prepared. And then in the same conversation I hear those same people
start talking about how they're gonna have to go and re-plan their vacations,
and they're trying to figure out when they should rebook their flights for
their trip to Mexico, and I am just flabbergasted that this is possible
because I would think that by now people would start listening to scientists!
Maybe it's a good time to think 'hey all of these medical professionals said that
this pandemic would happen if we didn't do anything and all of these climate
scientists are saying that if we don't do anything
we're gonna have an even bigger issue' And no one's listening to them. That is
extremely frustrating to me. I do have some hope in all of this that we can
learn from this issue. I think that we have the chance to actually change the
direction that we're going. The ways in which we can rebuild from this crisis
leave us actually potentially well positioned to make action on climate. We
can rebuild our infrastructures to be more resilient and to be less reliant on
fossil fuels. Now is a good time to do that. And now is the perfect time to
fight for things like Universal Basic Income, ways in which we can make sure
that everyone gets access to basic needs. Now is also the perfect time to fight
for healthcare, if you're an American. Please do that. But I hope if people can
really recognize the state of denial that they were in about COVID19 they
might also (while they're doing that sort of mental and emotional labor)...
I hope they can also recognize that they're probably in denial about climate
change. I think we need to have conversations about this. I think that
it's extremely important, and I hope you'll start some of those conversations.
So, please talk to people. I know that a lot of people are on the phone, or on
Skype, or Zoom these days and I hope that you try and bring up the problem of
climate and the fact that we're not doing anything about it, because we're
not. Sorry that this video is a little more depressing than mine normally are,
but we need to be taking this seriously and I really feel like we're not. So,
please talk to people about climate change, read about climate change, and
wherever you are I hope you're doing okay. I hope you're safe. Wash your hands,
and vote for climate. Thanks for watching.