Scientists describe grief, hope about climate change

when I communicate these results to public audiences I I think it's really important to talk to them about being able to talk about what's happening with their friends as one of the most important things that they can do knowing what I know about the science and the projections that puts me into a state of grief because sometimes you hear this information it's scary and you kind of shut down and you either go into a denial phase or depression or and I've I've been there I've been depressed about these results many times I feel it personally I have a new granddaughter first granddaughter she's 10 months old now and I almost feel like we need to have this team of you know psychologists or therapists go into communities that are dealing with climate change to allow people to process all of these emotions of their lost opportunities the displacement the loss of a world that we as a species have known since our beginning it's not fair for us as scientists to come in and say this is what we know this is what's happening and this is what you have to do without allowing people to emotionally respond to that information and for me keeping myself out of the depression mode is in large part engaging in solutions and for me part of that solution is educating people and helping them reach that point of acceptance about reality not acceptance as in giving up oh there's nothing we can do or it's so bad it's horrible but acceptance that the future is going to be different and not to fight that feeling anymore but to accept that feeling and then move a step past that and say well how do we want this to play out there's no question that the number one control knob for how our cryosphere is going to change is humans the future is not just a place that we get to - it's a place that we get to create together the future is not written yet we get to choose that pathway yes that's a good source of energy you know you can channel that energy of anger into some very productive action but it's productive only after you've reflected on the anger and where it's coming from and where it's directed we are nowhere near a point where we should put our heads in the sand or throw up our hands and feel that there's not something we can do absolutely there are many things we can do and indeed what we do will be the primary determinant of what things look like in the future so instead of looking at those graphs and thinking that's our destiny we can say no we can make a choice and and choose a different pathway I understand that we can sometimes feel despondent and feel like nothing it's out of our hands there's nothing that we can do but that is not as somebody who works with the system over the past 10 years I've been working in permafrost that's not the impression that I have it's we are really in the first step of what is going to be a very long process because these ice sheets may take hundreds of years thousands of years to respond even just to the warming that we've already caused today and so that's an ongoing journey so I really do see a sea change lots of people from all kinds of different backgrounds getting engaged realizing that we are causing the problem that's not reason to despair that's reason to take hope because that means we can be the solution right if it was something else causing climate change we wouldn't have anything that we could do about it since it's us it's absolutely within our control to change how we live to protect the climate system and ensure a better future you

Channel: YaleClimateConnections

Views: 6,298

Keywords: climate change, Yale Climate Connections, This is not cool, Peter Sinclair, climate grief, climate hope, global warming, climate future, science, scientist opinions

Id: fV34M7yH308

Length: 4min 34sec (274 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020