Bonus Episode: Hank Green on How to Talk About Climate Change
Bonus Episode: Hank Green on How to Talk About Climate Change
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
What's the best way to approach climate denialism? How should we feel if oil companies get rich solving the climate crisis? Do individuals have any power to address climate change? Casey discusses these questions and more with YouTube royalty Hank Green, a science communicator, author, and entrepreneur.
Notable quotes from the interview:
How do you bring about change through your work?
“Oftentimes you want to reach people before they're in the middle of an argument. Like that's really the time to reach them with information that might eventually lead to an argument. If you invite them into an existing argument, you're asking them to take a side.”
On climate change denialism:
“Why would I talk to someone who has such a clearly untrue and objectionable belief? This is how I feel about climate deniers. This person believes this because their identity is tied up in fossil fuels. And I understand that, I understand that having my identity tied up in the technologies and products that I use, and I love motocross. I like demolition derbies. I like monster trucks. That stuff's great. It's like the only thing we should use fossil fuels on.”
On thinking about the future in the context of the successes of the past:
“I think that it's important to talk about the progress that has been made as part of the story of the progress that we need to make. It's seductive to not do that because, you want to tell the scariest story, but the reality of the success of cap and trade systems for other pollutants are I think a really important part of the story of what we should do about carbon. And if we try to pretend like no environmental problem has ever been solved, then I think that can be activating for a moment, but it can burn really hot, really fast. And you run out of fuel.”
Check out more of Hank’s work:
Vlogbrothers (ft. Pricing Nature!) - a YouTube channel made with Hank’s brother, John Green
SciShow - with equal parts skepticism and enthusiasm, hosts Hank Green, Michael Aranda, Olivia Gordon, and Stefan Chin dig into the topics that make us wonder
CrashCourse - an educational YouTube channel focused on Biology and World History
Complexly - a video and audio production company
Photo from HankGreen.com