In our post-pandemic world, there is no more pressing issue than climate change. This fall, Disruptors, an RBC podcast, launched a multi-part series called The Climate Conversations, which explored some of the potential solutions to a warming planet—as well as some of the challenges in implementing them.

Early in the series, co-host John Stackhouse spoke with one of the leading voices for climate action, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe. Hayhoe is the Toronto-born chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University, who is often called “the most influential climate scientist on the planet.”

In this special extended cut of the conversation, we hear more from Dr. Hayhoe on her optimism for meeting the climate moment, the challenges in changing social norms—and some tips on how to win over climate skeptics.


Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here. This fall on disruptors, we’ve been exploring some of the big topics on climate change and speaking with some of the big players who are seeking climate action. We called the series the climate conversations, and it’s fair to say those conversations well, they’re just starting as part of that effort. We’re bringing you special extended cuts of some of our most popular climate conversations. Katharine Hayhoe, a Toronto-born climate scientist, was one of our earliest guests in the climate conversations and a passionate advocate for finding common ground through dialog. It’s actually the title of a TED talk she gave called the most important thing you can do to fight climate change. Talk about it, which has been viewed almost four million times. We talked with Katherine about what individual citizens can do to affect change and to change minds. Here’s more of that conversation. Katharine, welcome to disrupters.

Speaker 2 [00:00:57] Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 [00:00:58] I want to start, Katharine, with a question about optimism because so many climate conversations are negative or pessimistic. You’re an optimist.

Speaker 2 [00:01:09] I am, and I would like to say that I’m a rational optimist because I am a scientist and as a scientist, I see all the bad news firsthand. In fact, I get it hot off the press, so to speak. I look at the data myself, and the science does not give us a lot of hope. When we look at what’s happening to our world, climate is changing faster than any time in the history of human civilization on this planet. And that’s why it matters. It’s not about saving the world. The planet will still be orbiting the sun long after we’re gone. It is literally about saving us. But what I’ve noticed wherever I go, and I literally got this question even twice yesterday, once talking to medical students and then once talking to an academic group every single day, almost I’m asked what gives you hope? And so that’s actually why I wrote the book is because I figured this enough doom and gloom out there. We enough of us are activated. We’re concerned about it. The majority of Canadians understand that it’s a serious issue. So what can we do about it? It turns out that hope comes from action at that interesting and not recycling. And though, you know, every little bit helps. But specifically, when we get out and we use our voice to advocate for change when reengage with others, when we speak within the place where we work or the neighborhood or a kid’s school or, you know, an organization we’re part of, obviously our city and our province and at the national scale, when we use our voices to talk about why this matters and what we can do to help fix it, we don’t have to be David Suzuki to do this. I’m absolutely convinced that every single Canadian can do this. And when you look to the past, when you look to massive issues like slavery and women being able to vote and civil rights in the states and apartheid in South Africa, how did the world change before? It wasn’t because a prime minister or a president or a king or a CEO or even a celebrity decided it had to. It was when ordinary people used their voices to say, You know what? The world can and must be different. That’s how change happened.

Speaker 1 [00:03:09] What can each of us be doing more of? I mean, I recycle, and as our longtime listeners know, I’m an active biker, but I don’t think I’m doing nearly enough. What can each of us be doing more of?

Speaker 2 [00:03:21] Well, it’s so interesting because when I first started to talk to people about climate change, I would get that question immediately. And, you know, I would say the traditional things that we would all say. I would say, Well, you know, have you changed your light bulbs? Have you looked at where your electricity comes from? But then I thought to myself, Is that really enough? So I stepped on the carbon scales myself. I stepped on, you know, all right. I went to a carbon footprint calculator and I calculated my carbon footprint. And I was absolutely shocked because the number one source of my personal carbon emissions was not my light bulbs, and it was not even the car that I drove. It was not my hydro bill. It was my travel. And I’m not talking about like travel. The yoga retreats in Bali. The last time I went on an actual vacation, I can’t even remember. I mean, just to see family. It was travel to scientific conferences and to talk to people about climate change. I thought to myself, Well, this was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 [00:04:16] The irony COVID.

Speaker 2 [00:04:18] So I decided that pre-COVID I was going to transition 80 percent of the events I did to virtual events, whether people liked it or not. And if I traveled, I was only going to travel by bundling my events together so I would go somewhere and do like five, eight, 10. I think my record so far is 29 events and six days, which is kind of crazy, but it’s a very effective use of your time and your carbon. But then and here’s where being a scientist comes in. I started to calculate, OK. So I did this, and here’s how much I could reduce my carbon footprint. And I also got solar panels and plug in car and address food waste and diet stuff like that. What if everybody else who’s concerned and activated did it too? How much impact would that have on our national emissions? A fraction, a very small fraction, not even a third. And so I thought to myself, Well, this is not the answer. This is not the most effective thing that we can be doing. So that’s what I did this deep dove into. How is the world changed before? Was it because individual people took individual steps and that’s all they did? No, it’s because individual people use their voices to advocate for change in the larger sphere that they are in. So you’re at RBC? I’m at a university. I just joined. Make sure you need it as it’s called in Canada. The global affiliate of TMC, each of us is embedded in a place where we can use our voice to talk about how wherever we are can work together to make a difference.

Speaker 1 [00:05:44] We’ve just come through the summer of the apocalypse and felt like in many parts of the world. Did that dent your optimism?

Speaker 2 [00:05:53] Unfortunately, it did, because with climate change, a big part of our problem is something called psychological distance. We all agree it’s a big issue. We agree it will affect future generations and plants and animals and people living over there. But you know, we’re the north. We sort of see ourselves as invulnerable to global warming. We see it as a distant issue. And studies have shown that as we decrease our psychological distance, as we’re able to say, look, that crazy heat wave out west, it was one hundred and fifty times more likely because of climate change. The wildfire season we had back in 2017, it burned about 10 times the area because of climate change. The floods that we’re seeing there a hurricane category one passing over Newfoundland, we’re seeing climate change loading the weather dice against us. And so studies have shown that when we’re able to connect the impacts of climate change to our lives, our lived experience, our activation increases, our concern increases. But then you get Covid and I live in Texas. I live in a place where I know people who lost their lives and with their dying breath or saying, this isn’t coronavirus. I know people who their families then did not wear a mask or get vaccinated. And then they got Covid. And I’m thinking to myself, have I overestimated the human capability for self-preservation?

Speaker 1 [00:07:12] That’s such a good point, because here we have a clear and imminent threat to our public health, but to each of our lives, and it’s a struggle to come to collective decisions around masking and vaccinations. Climate is clear and present, but it doesn’t pose that immediate threat to most people’s lives. How on earth are we going to change behavior for a longer term threat when we can’t adequately change collective behavior for an imminent threat?

Speaker 2 [00:07:40] I still believe we can do it because I’ve seen it happen despite COVID. And that is if we truly address the two biggest things that are holding us back, which despite the headlines that we see with many politicians in the US and even some politicians in Canada as well, despite the climate denial we see in the headlines, the real problems most of us have are not issues with basic physics that we’ve known since the eighteen hundreds. If we really had issues with that basic physics, we wouldn’t be flying or using stoves or refrigerators because the same physics, the real problems we have are, again, we don’t think it matters to us and we don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. So if somebody told you that an asteroid was going to hit the Earth, but there is nothing you could do, you just be like, Oh, well, you know, I’ll leave that up to NASA, and I’ll just go on with my life because there’s nothing I can do. Maybe, you know, hug my kids a little tighter and hope for the best. And that’s sort of the way we feel like with climate change, as if it’s an asteroid headed for the Earth and there’s nothing we can do. Except, you know, like I said, older kids a bit tighter and hope for the best. But the reality is with climate change that there’s everything that we can do as individuals. In fact, the only way the world has changed before, again is when individuals decided that it must and it had to. But it all starts with something that I learned when I was doing my undergrad at U of T for the first time. So up until then, like I learned about climate change in high school, I learned about deforestation and air pollution and biodiversity loss. I learned about environmental issues and I thought about environmental issues as issues that are serious issues that people like changed at all. And David Suzuki and David Attenborough are taken care of and the rest of us wish them well and watched their documentaries. That’s sort of the way I thought of environmental issues. So I was studying astrophysics at U of T. I was planning on going on to graduate school, to study galaxies. And I needed an extra course to finish my degree and I looked around. There was a brand new class in the geography department over and said Smith, if anybody’s familiar with you chief. And I thought, Well, that looks interesting when I take it. So I took this class on climate science, and I was completely shocked to learn that climate change is not only an environmental issue. Climate change is a health issue. It’s an economic issue. It’s a national security issue. And most of all, and this is what completely changed my own trajectory. It’s a humanitarian issue. It directly and disproportionately impacts the poorest and most marginalized, most vulnerable people right here in Canada, homeless people living on the streets and Halifax indigenous peoples whose traditional way of life is literally crumbling before their eyes. It affects them more than anyone, and they’re the ones who have done the least to contribute to the problem. And you know, the United Nations has these very basic sustainable development goals. You know, no poverty, no hunger, clean water access to basic health care and education and gender equity. There’s no way to achieve any of these goals if we leave climate change out of the picture because it’s as U.S. military calls it, it’s a threat multiplier. So what I realized is that whatever your priorities are and whatever minor, you know, being a mom, being a parent, caring about the place where I live, loving, you know, loving winter sports, needing snow and ice to do them whatever my priorities are. It turns out that climate change already affects every single one of those, so it doesn’t have to be a new thing on our list or something that we have to try to force up our list, rather because of one, two, three, four and five on our list. We have every reason we need to care about climate change, and I think that that is key to beginning the conversations in a place that helps us connect directly to this issue from the heart based on our identity and who we are. And then recognizing that, you know what? We have a voice that we can use to advocate for change because I love my child, I love my city, I love my outdoor hockey rink. I love the place where I grew up and the fact that I see it changing. I love clean air. I don’t want it to be choked by wildfire smoke because of what we love. That’s why we can make a difference.

Speaker 1 [00:11:44] You’ve argued as well that climate is about values, and we’re also talking to Mark Carney, who has a book called The Values and I think would agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but you’re also saying it’s a rational decision. And I just wonder how we can balance in our conversations just the rational decision that saves you money or saves you time or makes your neighborhood safer versus the moral decision that this is about values and our collective being an even more existential questions

Speaker 2 [00:12:18] in most cases for most of us. Those two are not incompatible. In fact, often they’re very compatible. So making our neighborhoods healthier, for example, has a direct impact today. But it also typically reduces carbon emissions or takes up carbon from the atmosphere through investing in urban tree planting that also cleans up our air. So there’s and, you know, making our neighborhoods more resilient to flooding, for example, obviously helps ourselves with our insurance rates and the safety of our homes. But it helps us to adapt and build resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. So. So most of us, those aren’t incompatible. And honestly, I have a really funny story. My book, probably my favorite story of my colleague John. His dad lives in a rural area of Australia and his dad is a fiscal conservative, but he’s also an ideological conservative. And so in Australia, like in Canada, many conservatives reject the science of climate change because they don’t think there’s any solution other than destroying the economy. So its solution aversion masked with science sounding arguments because if you say it’s real, but I don’t want to fix it, that would make you a bad person, and most of us don’t want to be a bad person. So John’s dad would drag up, Oh, there’s more polar bears now than there ever were. You know, what are you saying? The Arctic is melting died every time John went home for dinner. And so John went back to school. He got a p, h d and cognitive psychology to understand denial. He created the world leading skeptical science website that lists 198 science’s sounding arguments against climate change and provides peer reviewed responses. Do you think that changed his father’s mind? I suspect not correct. It did not. But then there was a rebate on solar panels in his dad’s area, and so his dad got solar panels started to save a ton of money every month he would spend on his power bill, saying, John, look how much money I saved. It reinforced his own identity. It it fit rate with one of the things at the top of his priority list. And so two years later, John was sitting with his dad and out of nowhere, his dad said, Oh, you know, global warming. I’ve always thought that was real. And John was like, Why not only had he changed his mind, but he had forgotten that he had ever denied it because the solutions change his mind? You know what? There is nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1 [00:14:31] The great Jerry Maguire line. Show me the money, but you touch on a serious challenge that there are groups, large groups of people not necessarily connected to any one religion per se, but they tend to be identifiable groups by geography or some other demographic points, and the views tend to be fairly entrenched. We’re not seeing that kind of shift that you just cited of. John’s father, you’ve been wrestling with that for, for many years. How do you shift large groups of people that tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and in fact strengthen their groups by reinforcing those beliefs?

Speaker 2 [00:15:14] Well, you’re absolutely right. No one wakes up in one morning and decides, I’m just going to reject 200 years of physics. People wake up every morning and they check Facebook and they scroll through what other people in their social group are thinking about and talking about. They go on the internet and they visit the website of whatever organization whose values and views they share. They listen to today, not just to, you know, the national and not just to, you know, you know, everybody grew up listening to, you know, Peter Mansbridge or Walter Cronkite in the U.S.. No, everybody now listens to customized media that reinforces what they already believe. And so it isn’t that we read all the data and facts first, and we make up our mind second, as Jonathan Haidt, who’s a really interesting thinker, says in his book The Righteous Mind, he says, You know, we as humans, we make up our minds first based on what our social group, our in-group decides about various controversial issues like who to vote for in the budget and immigration and nationalism and climate change and masks and vaccines and Covid and racial issues and indigenous justice issues. We make up our mind based on what our group says, and then we engage in motivated reasoning where we go out and we search the internet to find out why we’re right, not whether we right, why we’re right. So how do we change that? People have put a lot of work into trying to figure that out, and I was part of a really interesting experiment a couple of months ago in the states called New Climate Voices. They got me and a Republican politician and an Air Force general and a libertarian to make short little videos about why climate change mattered from our different perspectives. And I was sharing a faith based perspective since I’m a Christian. They aired them in specific congressional districts in the U.S. on social media. And then they tested opinions among the general public in those congressional districts. And they found that among conservatives among Republicans, opinion shifted wide because they had somebody in their in-group telling them why this mattered to for the same reasons that they would care about it. I have this awesome student who works with me, and she started to help me on my social media and her grandma said, I don’t know why you’re working on this. Nobody believes in climate change. That’s just so those myths that they make up to make people vote for the liberals. And so my student, she’s like, Grandma, just listen. Just give it a listen. OK, you know, I’m doing this for a reason. So her grandma listened to just a couple of the videos and she sent her the ones from a Christian perspective, and her grandma completely changed your mind, and now she is button holing all the ladies in her church, telling them why. If you’re a Christian, you have to care about climate change, so change really can happen, but it has to happen, as you yourself said, not when we’re waving judgy fingers at people and saying you have to be just like me. I have a list of these 10 new green commandments, and if you don’t do those, you don’t really care about this issue. Change happens when we show people that who they already are is the perfect person to care. And in fact, caring about and acting on climate is a more genuine expression of the values they already have than what they’re doing right now.

Speaker 1 [00:18:28] Coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Katherine Hayhoe. So stay right there.

Speaker 3 [00:18:38] You’re listening to disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m trying to read the Dome earlier this fall, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership released a report called the two trillion dollar transition Canada’s Road to Net Zero. It explores the costs and benefits of Canada’s shift to a carbon neutral economy and how it can fuel a new generation of Canadian innovation, from carbon capture technology to sustainable agriculture to the full potential of super charging electric vehicles. We look at all the ways for Canada to take a leading role in the fight for climate action and the economic opportunities they create. To learn more. Check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit our bbc.com. Net zero emissions to listen to and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 [00:19:29] Welcome back. In the second half of my conversation with Katharine Hayhoe. We talk about climate lessons coming out of the pandemic, as well as the role of social norms in changing how we approach climate action. I sometimes think about smoking and cigarettes, and it’s, you know, an imperfect and maybe a bad analogy, but that that has been a decades long struggle with behavioral change. And when I think about some of the behavioral changes we need for true climate action, maybe there’s some lessons we can we can draw that out. And even though with smoking, all the science is there and many of us smoked regardless, we knew the risks that that we were taking and we did it anyway because it was maybe enjoyable, definitely addictive. But it was also cool. And one of the reasons it was cool was Hollywood. The cool people in film more often than not seem to smoke. And that’s still an issue. But Hollywood has bent and that that establishes or reinforces norms. And I wonder, in terms of climate and our own behaviors, what kind of norms in terms of mass media pop culture, we may need to start to challenge or think about to help change our own thinking and our own behavior.

Speaker 2 [00:20:51] I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, that’s that whole idea of social norms, the idea that we determine what’s acceptable and what’s not, because we always, as humans have these antenna, these invisible antenna up that are taking, you know, sort of taking the measure of what’s going on. So is it acceptable to have a plastic water bottle? No. Well, I better not have one. Is it acceptable to drive a giant gas guzzler? Oh, well, not really. That’s not cool anymore. It’s called the fast electric car. Better think about that next time. So you’re right, that has a huge impact, and that has played a big role in the changes that we’ve seen in the world. Before that I mentioned everything from, you know, women getting the right to vote to civil rights, to all kinds of changes. It’s been changes in social norms where people like that’s just not acceptable anymore. And how do we figure that out when we see other people doing it and when we hear other people talking about it? So, you know, get your solar panels or do whatever it is that you’re doing, but then talk about what you’re doing. That’s how you can change people. And in my book, even talk about how their scientific studies showing the impact of contagion, that the number one, for example, with solar panels, the number one predictor of whether you’ve got solar panels is whether there’s somebody else within about a kilometer and a half of your house that has the that’s the number one predictor. It’s contagious literally in a good way, not a bad way.

Speaker 1 [00:22:03] You mentioned Covid, and it’s been challenging and continues to be challenging in so many ways. It also illustrated how we can have a significant impact on emissions. Now, we don’t want to go through pandemics to decrease our carbon footprint, but we decreased our carbon footprint last year in ways that we’ve not been able to more positively engineer through decades of trying. You stopped flying as much. All of us are flying less. Maybe that has a material impact. Maybe it doesn’t. But what other lessons should we draw from the pandemic in terms of behavioral change and adjustments that we can carry forward into post-pandemic and healthier years ahead?

Speaker 2 [00:22:48] So at the height of the lockdowns last year in spring at global carbon emissions dropped by almost 20 percent and overall over the whole year they dropped by seven percent. And during that same year 2020, 90 percent of new energy installed around the world, some of it in the poorest low income countries of the world that don’t have a lot of fossil fuel resources, 90 percent of that energy was clean energy. So we saw some really significant shifts in the way that we’re living. And in fact, it’s estimated that in some places, in some very polluted places in China, it’s estimated that the reduction in air pollution from the lockdowns because of course, air pollution just falls out of the sky within a matter of days, maybe at most weeks, whereas carbon emissions stay there for, you know, decades. The U.S. air pollution might have saved just as many lives as were lost to Covid, because what a lot of people don’t know is a really shocking number. And that is that almost nine million people die prematurely from the particulate emissions, from air pollution, from burning fossil fuels alone every year. And where we are with Colvard right now, I think we’re somewhere over four and a half million premature deaths. And you know, don’t get me wrong, any premature death is a tragedy, but we’re so conscious of Covid. Yet somehow we’ve normalized nearly nine million premature deaths a year from burning fossil fuels. And so forget about the carbon. Just think about the impact on our health. Think about the impact on worker health for a business on personal health. Think about the impact on people in low income neighborhoods, which are often the ones most exposed to pollution. Think about the health impact in low income countries where they don’t have access to the health care system that we benefit from. I mean, there are all kinds of benefits that are entirely health related that are even. Larger than people getting the Covid vaccination, I mean, that is just insane when you think about and I feel like that is the conversation that we need to be having. Well, we’re going

Speaker 1 [00:24:49] to have some of these conversations because of the Glasgow Climate Conference. Governments have made some extraordinary commitments this year, including the US government. Is it enough?

Speaker 2 [00:25:00] It is not yet enough. I think of these international commitments sort of like a potluck dinner. Right now, we don’t have enough food on the table to feed everyone. We need to up our ambition and we need to up our delivery. So we’re at something like, I think, somewhere around three degrees Celsius and we need to be down at two or even one and a half. And so coming out of Glasgow, I would be so pleased and so happy and so relieved if we really had commitments, especially from the biggest emitting countries in the world. And, you know, we often think, well, Canada, such a small country, why does it matter? We’re actually number nine on the list of the top 10 cumulative carbon emissions emitters of all time. So sure, you know you’ve got China and the US and India and Russia and the EU, you’ve got them right up there at the top. But we’re not that far behind, so every little bit matters. And in fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts it really perfectly. They say every year matters, every bit of warming matters, every action matters and every choice matters. And so if we came out of Glasgow with countries making those choices, recognizing that it’s not about the environment, it’s about us, it’s not about the economy, it’s about actually saving the economy from the risks and impacts of climate change. It is about all of us and our human systems, our supply chains, our food, our water, our health, our infrastructure, tens of trillions of dollars of infrastructure built for conditions that don’t even exist anymore and will not exist again during our lifetime. If people finally realize that it is literally as a title, my book says it’s about saving us and put that on the table. I would be the happiest person in the world. Somebody asked me just the other day. They said, Well, you know what? If magically the climate solution were solved? Would you still study the planet? I said, no, I’d open a yarn shop, preferably on Vancouver Island.

Speaker 1 [00:26:48] Why aren’t I

Speaker 2 [00:26:49] just enjoy it? It’s something I get great joy and pleasure from it.

Speaker 1 [00:26:52] Perfectly good. That’s perfectly great, in fact. You mentioned the economy, and I don’t think we talk enough about climate as an economic opportunity, and I’m not trying to be cavalier or materialistic about it, but just to frame it differently. We’ve got a really interesting piece of research coming out of RBC on pathways to net zero for Canada. Calculating that it’ll probably be a two trillion dollar project for us over the next 30 years. And a lot of people hear that number and think $2 trillion of my Lord, there go the tax increases and we’re saying no, actually that $2 trillion, this is manageable. Most of it may be private money, by the way. It’s not all up to government. In fact, it’s going to be much better if it’s not government money and it’s going to be investment. This isn’t wealth transfer, it’s not tax and spend. This can be the biggest investment project we’ve seen in nearly a century, and that will have all sorts of multipliers in terms of jobs and incomes and prosperity for communities pretty much everywhere. This isn’t about one sector, it’s not about the oil and gas sector or about Alberta. This is about every sector, every region. And I appreciate that’s kind of a high level economics thinking. But how do we translate that conversation into a meaningful way for everyone who does worry about their job, who does worry about their paycheck, or at least the trajectory or flatlining of their income? For students who are wondering if they’re going to have a job or if they’re going to be in the gig economy forever, how do we take these kind of big macro concepts around the economy and bring it down to the individual household and neighborhood level?

Speaker 2 [00:28:35] Well, first of all, I’m delighted to hear that you’re doing this because we need the voice of organizations and institutions like RBC. And what you’re doing in its native form is going to be incredibly influential among the people who think in those terms. And those people need to hear your voice, not mine, because you are somebody who speaks that same language and understands those same concepts. And you’re right, it’s about opportunities. It’s about, you know, when a couple of years ago, I remember just before Christmas, I was at one of the malls in Mississauga and there was a lineup of 200 people outside the Apple Store. They were waiting for the new iPhone. And we had just come up from the state. So my husband had just gotten his, so he literally took his life. And he’s like walking down the road, going, Yes, it’s great. Look at it. Here it is. So were those people told they should get it? Were they told they had to get it? Do they have somebody waving a judgmental finger at them telling him this better if they got it? No. They wanted it because it was better. And really and truly and honestly so many solutions to climate change, from technological solutions to lifestyle solutions, to the amazing, nature based solutions that Nature United does with their Emerald Edge project working with. First Nations tribes out in British Columbia. There’s so many solutions that are good for us that when you actually hear about what they are, you’re like, Hell, yes, I love that. How can I be part of it? And so I feel like that’s what we haven’t done as we haven’t communicated that enthusiasm, that opportunity, as well as the financial risks. So you just said, you know, here’s what we have to spend to get there. But what about the risks that we’re avoiding through building resilience and adaptation and to encouraging other countries to come along with us? Because, believe me, they are watching and we can influence them too? So what are we avoiding? What are we gaining and how do we understand that the future’s coming, whether we like it or not? And it’s up to us, and this is literally a science fiction here. The future that we see is up to us. It is in our hands. It is our choices that will determine this. Will our civilization be able to continue or not? That is what is at risk.

Speaker 1 [00:30:37] We’ve been having a fairly optimistic conversation, which I appreciate, but there may be people listening who say that’s not the full story. There will be people. There will be sectors. There may be regions that will be losers in this transition. There has to be a bit of give for the take, if you will. Mm-Hmm. How do you have that conversation with those regions you come from Texas, which may and there’s incredible things going on with renewables in Texas and so many other sectors, but there are plenty of people in Texas who think they will be long term losers. And I’m not trying to pick on Texas. It’s just an illustration of many times around the world who feel this way. How do you engage people who feel they see writing on the wall? That is not for them? Happy writing.

Speaker 2 [00:31:23] Well, first of all, I think the most important thing is to be proactive about that engagement. Acknowledge it upfront. Don’t wait for them to tell you. Think of it and look at it yourself and realize, Hey, there’s a lot of people who are just trying to feed their families. They have a well-paying job in Alberta and the oil and gas industry, or here in West Texas, which is also the home to the oil and gas industry. And they’re not doing it. They didn’t get that job because they wanted to, you know, help destroy civilization as we know it. They picked that job because we need energy and energy is something that is inextricably linked with human well-being around the world. Access to electricity specifically is one of the major metrics that determines our level of well-being. So when I had the chance to talk to the board of Big Oil and Gas Company here in Texas a couple of years ago, I was invited to speak and I thought to myself, what? I can’t do it unless I figure out how we can connect over something we share first. I’m not going to go in there and start with something we disagree on. I have to start with something that we agree on, and if I can’t do that, I’m not the right person to have that conversation. So I thought about it and thought about it some more. And finally, I was probably like unloading the dishwasher or something when it occurred to me. That’s one of the best thoughts come. Finally, I realized, You know what? I am profoundly grateful for fossil fuels. Imagine what a woman’s life was like. Imagine what anyone’s life was like 200 years ago. It was short, miserable and filled with bone-breaking repetitive tasks that left them no time for education, no time for leisure, no time for travel, no time for anything that we enjoy doing today. Energy has transformed our lives. In fact, thanks to the medical advances that were part and parcel of the industrial revolution that I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m alive. I’m sure I would have died at an early age from some horrible thing, let alone, you know, when you get to the point where you’re actually having a child or some type of very high risk activity like that. So I actually started off by telling them how grateful I was for fossil fuels and how I realized that they were doing this because it helped people. And we need energy. And the solution to our future is not to just pull the plug. It’s to figure out new ways of getting energy. The same way we don’t use a Model T Ford today, the same way we don’t use the party’s own telephone in the same way we need energy just as much, if not more in the future than we did in the past. But in the same way, we’re transitioning to new sources of energy. So how can we work together to try to figure out how to get those new sources while still providing good paying jobs for people who have these skills who again are just trying to support their family and be part of the local economy? And I can tell you it was amazing because I went in and meeting all the arms were folded. All the pastor was leaning back. Everybody was giving side I to the one guy who invited me like, Why did you invite her to speak to us? He sort of read the brainwaves, but when I said that? You could see like the arms were unfolding, people were leaning forward, and then one guy finally said, he’s like, You get it. We’re not the bad guys. We’re doing this because people need energy. And I was like, Yes, that’s right. And how can we keep on making sure they get energy in the future? And so that conversation was supposed to be about 40 minutes and end up going two plus hours. Everybody wanted to know what’s really happening. How is it affecting people and how can they be the good guys? And when we come at it with that attitude of most people do really want to be the good guys. Not all the time. I mean, it’s not some magic, you know, panacea, but a lot of the time we can end up having much more constructive conversations. And when we come at it with the idea of You’re bad, I’m good and I’m going to fix you.

Speaker 1 [00:34:53] Katherine, you are an optimist in

Speaker 2 [00:34:55] my in my good moments. I absolutely am.

Speaker 1 [00:34:57] And it’s contagious. Katherine, thank you for being on disrupters. Thank you for having me. That was Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist with the Nature Conservancy and author of Saving US a Climate Scientist Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, which was published this September. Stay with us in the weeks ahead. For more extended cuts of our most popular interviews from the Climate Conversations, a special multi-part series on disrupters. To hear the complete series, go to our bbc.com slash disruptors. Until next time, I’m John Stackhouse. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 [00:35:38] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc.com slash Disruptors.


Jennifer Marron produces "Disruptors, an RBC podcast". Prior to joining RBC, Jennifer spent five years as Community Manager at MaRS Discovery District and cultivated a large network of industry leaders, entrepreneurs and partners to support the Canadian startup ecosystem. Her writing has appeared in The National Post, Financial Post, Techvibes, IT Business, CWTA Magazine and Procter & Gamble’s magazine, Rouge. Follow her on Twitter @J_Marron.

This article is intended as general information only and is not to be relied upon as constituting legal, financial or other professional advice. A professional advisor should be consulted regarding your specific situation. Information presented is believed to be factual and up-to-date but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. All expressions of opinion reflect the judgment of the authors as of the date of publication and are subject to change. No endorsement of any third parties or their advice, opinions, information, products or services is expressly given or implied by Royal Bank of Canada or any of its affiliates.