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.
