Two climate scientists on how to use emotion in the climate crisis
With emissions still rising, how do we feel hope for the future?Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images With dire environmental warnings and extreme weather events in the news almost every day, it can be tempting to simply avoid thinking about the climate crisis. But how do climate scientists, who must grapple with the harsh reality of our changing planet every day, cope? What can they teach us about processing the powerful emotions provoked by escalating climate change? And are there ways we can use these feelings to our advantage? New Scientist recently sat down with New York-based climate scientist Kate Marvel and Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, UK. Both have spent years modelling how our planet may react to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and both have recently published books that distil their perspectives on how best to engage with, and tackle, the climate emergency. At first glance, these are two quite different books. Human Nature, by Marvel, is a series of essays exploring the science of climate change, each centred on a different emotional response to the crisis. By contrast, Lenton’s book, Positive Tipping Points, prioritises taking action over introspection. It makes a persuasive case that a radical, systemic shift to a cleaner world is possible with the right social, economic and technological interventions. At their heart, though, both books are about how to embrace our emotions around climate change so we can reframe our thinking and actions. In this conversation, Lenton and Marvel reveal why we should feel angry, fearful, proud and hopeful all at once about our future on Earth. Rowan Hooper: Kate, your book is about nine ways to feel about our changing planet. Can we start with anger? Kate Marvel: The anger chapter was one of the easiest ones to write. What I wanted to talk about was the history of how we discovered climate change was happening. The thing that makes me really angry is that the history of scientists finding stuff out is intertwined with the history of people lying about it. I tell this story of a research group. They’re trying to establish that most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels, and they design these really creative experiments to prove that. They have a large ship that’s going around, taking measurements of the ocean. And eventually they develop a climate model that has made extremely accurate projections in retrospect. You know who did all of that? It was Exxon. That does make me very angry. The fact that they knew. RH: Can anger be motivating? KM: I hope so. It can be really easy to go down a bad path where all you are is angry. Social media definitely incentivises this, where you’re fed more and more outrage, but it’s not productive outrage. RH: Your book also covers wonder, guilt, fear, grief, surprise, pride, hope and love. Can you talk us through how you processed these emotions? KM: What I wanted to do is embrace the fact there is no one way to feel about climate change. I was getting really frustrated when I was reading things that were designed to elicit a single emotion. Either, just be afraid, or just be angry, or just be hopeful. That didn’t feel very useful to me. I wanted to acknowledge that if you live on planet Earth, you have a conflict of interest. You care about what happens to this place. Because everybody that you know lives here. Tim Lenton studies “tipping points” in ecosystems that could affect the wider climateUniversity of Exeter RH: Tim, how do you find dealing with the emotions that come with studying climate change? Tim Lenton: I’ve been studying climate tipping points that could be really bad, really nasty. And arguably some of them are starting to unfold. I mean, we’re losing tropical coral reefs that up to half a billion people in the world depend on for their livelihoods. I’ve been staring this stuff down for nearly 20 years. So, I just found I had to use the mental toolkit I had of understanding complex systems to try to see if I could find plausible grounds for hope. Could we build a credible case that we could accelerate the change we need to get out of trouble? It took doing the research on the book to see that there was evidence that this is possible, and I wasn’t just going to delude myself with naive hope. RH: So it’s rational, usable hope? TL: It’s conditional optimism. I’m optimistic on the basis that some people are going to read the book, and some fraction of them will join me on the same journey. History teaches us that it only needs a fraction of people to change to ultimately tip everyone to change. Madeleine Cuff: Tim, much of your career has focused on this idea of tipping points. For those who are new to the concept, what are they? TL: Tipping points are those moments where a small change makes a big difference to the state or the fate of some system. For the bad ones in the climate, we know that there are large parts of the Earth system – major ice sheets, aspects of the ocean circulation, big bits of the biosphere – that have what we call alternative stable states. And they can be tipped from one state into another. We could potentially tip the Amazon rainforest into a different degraded forest or savannah state, for example. MC: What is a positive tipping point? TL: I’m drawing on over half a century of scholarship in different fields that shows you can have tipping points in social change. We’re all familiar with the idea of political revolutions popping up and protests popping up seemingly out of nowhere and exploding in size. But history also teaches us that sometimes you get abrupt and hard-to-reverse changes in technology. There are tipping points where one new technology will take over from an existing one. RH: The obvious climate example I’m thinking of is electric vehicles. And, of course, solar is so cheap now that it’s really taking off. How do we bring about positive tipping points? TL: We have to think about what actions can bring forward the positive tipping points, accepting that we need to be going more than five times faster than we are at decarbonising the economy. Luckily, each of us has agency to do something about this. At the most basic level, maybe we can be an adopter of new behaviour, such as eating less meat, or adopting a new technology like EVs or solar panels. We’ve probably also got a pension fund, and we should be asking hard questions about where that’s invested. The story of positive tipping points that have already happened starts with social activists or innovators. The people who have a passion to develop the core new technology, or activists who want to create change and see that possibility before everybody else. In her research, Kate Marvel tries to better model our planet’s changing climateRoy Rochlin/Getty Images MC: Kate, we’ve talked a little bit about the negative emotions that come with thinking about climate change. But what about the impact of positive emotions? What role can they play in inspiring positive action? KM: I started the book with the emotion wonder because, when you take a step back, just thinking about this planet that we live on and the fact that we understand it at all, that’s incredible. It’s a really useful tool for making connections and starting conversations. A lot of times, when I tell people I’m a climate scientist, they assume I’m immediately going to start scolding them. But if you start out with wonder, if you start out a conversation with: “Did you know the Earth’s water is probably older than the Earth itself?” people are going to say: “Oh wait, that’s amazing.” And they are going to be more likely to talk to you. Embracing a wide spectrum of emotions is useful as a communications strategy. There is support for feeling these emotions in the scientific and social scientific literature. There is a sense of pride we can feel in doing the hard work. There is deep satisfaction in making change. The social science literature also says that love is probably the most powerful motivating factor in climate action. People are motivated to act because they love their communities, their families, their children. We know how powerful that emotion is. I have a whole chapter on hope, even though I have a very complicated relationship to hope. I feel like when people always ask me: “Do you hope we can solve climate change?” that, for me, is like asking, do you hope you can clean your bathroom? That’s a silly question. You know what to do, just go clean your bathroom. As Tim says, we have so many of the solutions we need. We are on these trajectories already. We just need to push them over the precipice. We need to get past that social tipping point. RH: We have to face up to these emotions, don’t we? Maybe that’s one reason why we haven’t really got to grips with the problem – it’s too big for us to face. KM: Totally. I think about this stuff all day every day, and I still don’t really understand it. I can’t fit it into my head. This is a problem that is caused by basically every industrial human activity. And because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are well mixed in the atmosphere, it is affecting literally every aspect of life on this planet. Trying to boil that down to something very glib and manageable is just not possible. It is the work of a lifetime, or many lifetimes, to really come to terms with what this is and what this means, and what we do about it. Most Americans are concerned about climate change and want the US government to do something. But when you look at the polls, most Americans think other Americans do not think that. So that, I think, is why one of the most powerful things that an individual can do regarding climate change is to talk about it. Because when you talk about it, you realise, maybe I’m not so much of an individual after all. Maybe I’m not alone. RH: What do you want people to do after reading your books? KM: I would like people to think about how to tell climate stories that resonate with themselves, with their own community, with the people who will listen to them because of who they are and what they bring to the table. TL: I’m hoping the readers are feeling empowered to act, in what might have beforehand been feeling like a very scary, disempowering situation. I’d like them instead to feel a sense of agency. This is an edited version of an interview that originally took place on New Scientist‘s The World, the Universe and Us podcast What on earth can we do about climate change? See Matt Winning explain how to dispel the despair and take action on 18 October newscientist.com/nslmag
From anger to hope, Kate Marvel and Tim Lenton explain how to tackle the tricky feelings aroused by climate change and harness them to take action
With emissions still rising, how do we feel hope for the future? Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
With dire environmental warnings and extreme weather events in the news almost every day, it can be tempting to simply avoid thinking about the climate crisis. But how do climate scientists, who must grapple with the harsh reality of our changing planet every day, cope? What can they teach us about processing the powerful emotions provoked by escalating climate change? And are there ways we can use these feelings to our advantage?
New Scientist recently sat down with New York-based climate scientist Kate Marvel and Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter, UK. Both have spent years modelling how our planet may react to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and both have recently published books that distil their perspectives on how best to engage with, and tackle, the climate emergency.
At first glance, these are two quite different books. Human Nature, by Marvel, is a series of essays exploring the science of climate change, each centred on a different emotional response to the crisis. By contrast, Lenton’s book, Positive Tipping Points, prioritises taking action over introspection. It makes a persuasive case that a radical, systemic shift to a cleaner world is possible with the right social, economic and technological interventions.
At their heart, though, both books are about how to embrace our emotions around climate change so we can reframe our thinking and actions. In this conversation, Lenton and Marvel reveal why we should feel angry, fearful, proud and hopeful all at once about our future on Earth.
Rowan Hooper: Kate, your book is about nine ways to feel about our changing planet. Can we start with anger?
Kate Marvel: The anger chapter was one of the easiest ones to write. What I wanted to talk about was the history of how we discovered climate change was happening. The thing that makes me really angry is that the history of scientists finding stuff out is intertwined with the history of people lying about it.
I tell this story of a research group. They’re trying to establish that most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels, and they design these really creative experiments to prove that. They have a large ship that’s going around, taking measurements of the ocean. And eventually they develop a climate model that has made extremely accurate projections in retrospect. You know who did all of that? It was Exxon. That does make me very angry. The fact that they knew.
RH: Can anger be motivating?
KM: I hope so. It can be really easy to go down a bad path where all you are is angry. Social media definitely incentivises this, where you’re fed more and more outrage, but it’s not productive outrage.
RH: Your book also covers wonder, guilt, fear, grief, surprise, pride, hope and love. Can you talk us through how you processed these emotions?
KM: What I wanted to do is embrace the fact there is no one way to feel about climate change. I was getting really frustrated when I was reading things that were designed to elicit a single emotion. Either, just be afraid, or just be angry, or just be hopeful. That didn’t feel very useful to me. I wanted to acknowledge that if you live on planet Earth, you have a conflict of interest. You care about what happens to this place. Because everybody that you know lives here.
Tim Lenton studies “tipping points” in ecosystems that could affect the wider climate University of Exeter
RH: Tim, how do you find dealing with the emotions that come with studying climate change?
Tim Lenton: I’ve been studying climate tipping points that could be really bad, really nasty. And arguably some of them are starting to unfold. I mean, we’re losing tropical coral reefs that up to half a billion people in the world depend on for their livelihoods.
I’ve been staring this stuff down for nearly 20 years. So, I just found I had to use the mental toolkit I had of understanding complex systems to try to see if I could find plausible grounds for hope. Could we build a credible case that we could accelerate the change we need to get out of trouble? It took doing the research on the book to see that there was evidence that this is possible, and I wasn’t just going to delude myself with naive hope.
RH: So it’s rational, usable hope?
TL: It’s conditional optimism. I’m optimistic on the basis that some people are going to read the book, and some fraction of them will join me on the same journey. History teaches us that it only needs a fraction of people to change to ultimately tip everyone to change.
Madeleine Cuff: Tim, much of your career has focused on this idea of tipping points. For those who are new to the concept, what are they?
TL: Tipping points are those moments where a small change makes a big difference to the state or the fate of some system. For the bad ones in the climate, we know that there are large parts of the Earth system – major ice sheets, aspects of the ocean circulation, big bits of the biosphere – that have what we call alternative stable states. And they can be tipped from one state into another. We could potentially tip the Amazon rainforest into a different degraded forest or savannah state, for example.
MC: What is a positive tipping point?
TL: I’m drawing on over half a century of scholarship in different fields that shows you can have tipping points in social change. We’re all familiar with the idea of political revolutions popping up and protests popping up seemingly out of nowhere and exploding in size. But history also teaches us that sometimes you get abrupt and hard-to-reverse changes in technology. There are tipping points where one new technology will take over from an existing one.
RH: The obvious climate example I’m thinking of is electric vehicles. And, of course, solar is so cheap now that it’s really taking off. How do we bring about positive tipping points?
TL: We have to think about what actions can bring forward the positive tipping points, accepting that we need to be going more than five times faster than we are at decarbonising the economy. Luckily, each of us has agency to do something about this.
At the most basic level, maybe we can be an adopter of new behaviour, such as eating less meat, or adopting a new technology like EVs or solar panels. We’ve probably also got a pension fund, and we should be asking hard questions about where that’s invested.
The story of positive tipping points that have already happened starts with social activists or innovators. The people who have a passion to develop the core new technology, or activists who want to create change and see that possibility before everybody else.
In her research, Kate Marvel tries to better model our planet’s changing climate Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
MC: Kate, we’ve talked a little bit about the negative emotions that come with thinking about climate change. But what about the impact of positive emotions? What role can they play in inspiring positive action?
KM: I started the book with the emotion wonder because, when you take a step back, just thinking about this planet that we live on and the fact that we understand it at all, that’s incredible. It’s a really useful tool for making connections and starting conversations.
A lot of times, when I tell people I’m a climate scientist, they assume I’m immediately going to start scolding them. But if you start out with wonder, if you start out a conversation with: “Did you know the Earth’s water is probably older than the Earth itself?” people are going to say: “Oh wait, that’s amazing.” And they are going to be more likely to talk to you. Embracing a wide spectrum of emotions is useful as a communications strategy.
There is support for feeling these emotions in the scientific and social scientific literature. There is a sense of pride we can feel in doing the hard work. There is deep satisfaction in making change. The social science literature also says that love is probably the most powerful motivating factor in climate action. People are motivated to act because they love their communities, their families, their children. We know how powerful that emotion is.
I have a whole chapter on hope, even though I have a very complicated relationship to hope. I feel like when people always ask me: “Do you hope we can solve climate change?” that, for me, is like asking, do you hope you can clean your bathroom? That’s a silly question. You know what to do, just go clean your bathroom.
As Tim says, we have so many of the solutions we need. We are on these trajectories already. We just need to push them over the precipice. We need to get past that social tipping point.
RH: We have to face up to these emotions, don’t we? Maybe that’s one reason why we haven’t really got to grips with the problem – it’s too big for us to face.
KM: Totally. I think about this stuff all day every day, and I still don’t really understand it. I can’t fit it into my head. This is a problem that is caused by basically every industrial human activity. And because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are well mixed in the atmosphere, it is affecting literally every aspect of life on this planet.
Trying to boil that down to something very glib and manageable is just not possible. It is the work of a lifetime, or many lifetimes, to really come to terms with what this is and what this means, and what we do about it.
Most Americans are concerned about climate change and want the US government to do something. But when you look at the polls, most Americans think other Americans do not think that. So that, I think, is why one of the most powerful things that an individual can do regarding climate change is to talk about it. Because when you talk about it, you realise, maybe I’m not so much of an individual after all. Maybe I’m not alone.
RH: What do you want people to do after reading your books?
KM: I would like people to think about how to tell climate stories that resonate with themselves, with their own community, with the people who will listen to them because of who they are and what they bring to the table.
TL: I’m hoping the readers are feeling empowered to act, in what might have beforehand been feeling like a very scary, disempowering situation. I’d like them instead to feel a sense of agency.
This is an edited version of an interview that originally took place on New Scientist‘s The World, the Universe and Us podcast
What on earth can we do about climate change?
See Matt Winning explain how to dispel the despair and take action on 18 October newscientist.com/nslmag