 Good afternoon everybody and you're very welcome to join us for this IIEA webinar. My name is Alex White, I'm Director-General of the Institute and we have an absolutely superb guest to introduce to you this afternoon. Catherine Heyhoe was Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Professor of Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University. I'll say a little bit more about Catherine in a minute but first of all welcome, you're warmly welcome to the IIEA. I don't know if others on this call will have been following you on LinkedIn and elsewhere but certainly on LinkedIn in my case, where each week you're sharing a good news story and a not so good news story about the time of crisis and something that you can do about it. So also putting people in the picture as something positive that they can actually do in the context of what's happening. I'm actually in Dubai at the moment, our distinguished guest is in Texas. Most people watching us I think are in Ireland or somewhere close by so as I say everybody is more than welcome. Catherine, Professor Heyhoe will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so as is our normal approach and then we go to Q&A. We've got a slightly different feature of the Q&A. You can actually upvote questions or questions that you will see that have been posed. You will be able to use the facility there in the Q&A to upvote a question. So to give questions that have come in that are as it were supported, you can show that by upvoting and that actually gives a greater sense of what's most popular, some people's minds and what is actually a question that is one that is compelling for perhaps more than just one person. And that's no offence to anybody but it just gives a good sense of where we're at. Just to remind everybody that today's presentation and the Q&A are all on the record. We used to say that you can join the discussion on Twitter. I don't know what to call it anymore. X I suppose. Some people are calling it other things but anyway you can join it there. The handle is at IEEA and as I say it is now my pleasure to introduce Professor Catherine Heyhoe who is the Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy and Paul Whitfield, Foreign Distinguished Professor and the Political Science Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Texas Tech University. Professor Heyhoe also serves as a principal investigator for the US Department of Interior's South Central Climate Adaptation Science Centre. In 1997 she founded the Atmos Research, an institution which bridges the gap between scientists and stakeholders on the effect of climate change on human populations. She's the author of Saving Us, A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World which was published by Simon and Schuster in 2021. I'm really looking forward and I know that many scores of people who are on this call are looking forward to hearing what Catherine has to say. Before we invite Catherine to take the floor, it's my pleasure to invite Pat Fenlan to address you. Welcome to the ESB and I in my effort to get as far as I have Pat have just momentarily forgotten your elevated title in the ESB and please forgive me for that. Pat joins us in senior management at ESB and as always we want to acknowledge the support and collaboration of the ESB with the IIA in this series and to emphasise that and to mark that path. I'm hoping that you will forgive me for having momentarily forgotten your title all these miles away in Dubai but you're more than welcome and please over to you. Thank you Alex and no worries about the title Executive Director of Customer Solutions ESB but that's okay. I'd rather someone forgets what my title is and make one up and call me something else which can happen from time to time but thanks Alex and good afternoon everybody. On behalf of ESB, I would like to welcome you to today's lecture. This is the final lecture in the 2023 series and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the IIA for all the work they put into this series this year. And particularly to Alex, despite forgetting my title for chairing so many of the lectures and done a great job in that task. Over the past six months, we have heard from an outstanding line up of speakers, allowing us to benefit from a wide range of insights and perspectives. And I think today with Professor Katerineho, it's no exception and I'm delighted that she's agreed to give us the concluding lecture in the series. She's a leading voice at the intersection of climate action and communications with an ability to effectively connect with people around the changes that we badly need. And as she said herself on her own webpage, I don't accept global warming on faith. I crunched the data, I analyzed the models, I help engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts. At ESB, we are also data driven data gives us the insights to see trends, identify risks and opportunities, and ultimately to help solve problems. It is a foundational capability in our 2040 net zero strategy at ESB. We need data to track our progress on our net zero journey and to give our customers the insights they need to manage their energy use. But of course, having the data is one thing, being able to express it in a way that is meaningful, useful and can drive change is an entirely different thing. And hopefully we hear a little bit more about that today from from Catherine. In ESB, we are constantly seeking ways to do that better. Professor Hayhoe also talks about the fact that climate change isn't just an environmental issue. It's a threat multiplier that makes the most serious humanitarian issues even worse. This is a really important, important point, because climate change is just one of multiple interlinking challenges that are putting our human and natural systems at risk. In ESB, we are in the process of developing our updated sustainability leadership plan, which looks beyond just climate change on its own, but also how we can make a difference in areas such as biodiversity, resource use and communities. As an electricity utility, our greatest impact in ESB would be on tackling climate change through the decarbonisation of energy. Decarbonised electricity, combined with deep electrification of our economy and society, is critical to addressing climate change. This will deliver significant carbon savings and will help to ensure that we can stay within one and a half degrees of planetary warming, which, as we all know and I'm sure Alex is hearing at COP28, is a really tight challenge for all of us on this planet. Today's lecture, Fighting Climate Change with Dialogue, captures a critical element of this transition, getting everybody on board and pointing in the same direction, which is no small task. The issues are complex and often upset the status quo, so effective dialogue is critical to getting everybody on board. We all need to be part of the solution, whether that's as an electricity consumer embracing new technology, or as a citizen accepting the need for low carbon infrastructure. So Professor Heho, thank you for agreeing to be part of the series today and I look forward to your lecture. Thank you so much for having me. It is an honour to be your final speaker of 2023. And what timing because as we speak now, many world leaders and experts are gathered in Dubai, along with Alex, to talk about the next step in climate action. But I'm convinced that we don't have to be in Dubai to take action on climate. In fact, wherever we are is the perfect place to speak up to advocate for action and to catalyze change. And there's one secret to doing that. It's a secret that is so obvious that we often just skip right over it. And that is the fact that by using our voices, which each one of us has, that is the first step to catalyzing that change. So my brief conversation with you today is titled Fighting Climate Change with Dialogue. And I want to begin, though, with framing where we are, what is there to talk about, and how are people feeling about this? So when we look around the world, if you ask people, are you worried about climate change? The countries that are pink or red are where more than 60% of people said yes. And you can see Ireland there is 70 to 80%. The grey areas, the survey did not ask the question. When we look specifically at Ireland, this is results from the Yale program on climate communications, climate change in the Irish Mind report. We find that 36% of people in Ireland are alarmed, 48% are concerned, 12% are cautious, and just 3% are doubtful. I feel like I might have met almost all of those 3% on Twitter, but the majority of people are not in that category. They might be the loudest voices in the small 3%, but 97% of people in Ireland are alarmed, concerned, or cautious about climate change. And they should be. We all should be because as a climate scientist, which is what I am, I know that looking back in time, as far as we can, we have never seen this much carbon going into the atmosphere this quickly. We are truly conducting an unprecedented experiment with our only home. And today we are seeing, according to the IPCC, a warming that is unprecedented in human history. We humans have never experienced a warming this fast, and why does that matter? It matters because all of our infrastructure, our water systems, our food systems, our built environment, even our geopolitical boundaries, our economy, our supply chains, everything is built for a planet that no longer exists. That's why this matters to us. It is literally affecting the water that we drink and we can't survive without water. And you may say, well, why does that matter to Ireland? It turns out that water is a big way that climate change is likely to threaten the economy and way of life in Ireland. It affects the food that we eat. And we know, thanks to this report from just the other year, that there are concerns about food security in Ireland in a warmer world. And there are also ways to transition to improved agricultural practices and diets to address the climate crisis in Ireland. We know that climate change is affecting the buildings and roads and systems that we use, and we know that much of our infrastructure is not prepared. A few years ago, the Society of Civil Engineers gave Ireland's infrastructure a report card. And as you can see, these grades are not good. So we are seeing these vulnerabilities all around the world. We see them where I live in the United States. We see them in my home country of Canada. We see them across the EU in Ireland in the UK as well. Wherever we go, we see these impacts. And of course, we also see that these changes are impacting the nature that surrounds us as well. We see that, again, everywhere we live, including Ireland. We see that native species are threatened, invasive species are spreading, shifts are happening too quickly from any natural systems to adapt. It really is not about saving the planet. Often people speak about is it people or the planet, the environment or the economy. There is no economy on a dead planet. The planet does not need us. It will be orbiting the sun long after we're gone. We are the ones who need the planet. And so that's why when I speak about this, I don't talk about saving the planet. I talk about saving us. And by us, there's a little asterisk there. I mean us humans and the nature on which our life depends. Half the oxygen we breathe comes from tiny phytoplankton in the ocean. The rest comes from seaweed and trees. Where does our food and our water come from? Where do all the materials we use come from? It comes from nature. Nature does not need us. We need it. So then the year 2023 happened. And this is just a selection of headlines from this past year. We could do an entire presentation just on the climate and weather extremes this past year. And we could do an entire presentation just on the climate and weather extremes this past year. The wildfires, the heat waves, the glaciers melting, the droughts, the floods. And everywhere I went on social media, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on threads, on Instagram, everywhere I went on social media, I saw people saying this this summer. If this isn't enough to catalyze climate action at scale, if the wildfires in the North West Territories, if the wildfires in the Canary Islands, if the wildfires in Greece, if the heatwave in the United States, if the heatwave in China, if the heatwave in India isn't enough. Every time something happened, I heard people saying this. But it isn't because it's based on a fundamental misconception. The fundamental misconception we have, and now you know it's a misconception because you know what this looks like for Ireland, this misconception we have, is that I'm worried and all of us here together are worried. If I asked you if you're worried, I'm sure most of you would say yes, right? But we think that everybody else who doesn't want to talk about it, they're not worried. And if they're not worried, what do we need to do? We need to make them worried because they should be worried. Climate changes and we're worried. We look around and we see that the dialogue is not happening. People are not having a conversation. So what do we do? We load up our wheelbarrows, so to speak, with all of the very accurate, very true, scary facts about how climate change is affecting our food, our water, sea level rise, our homes, security. And we dump that on people. What happens? We don't see the changes happening that we needed. And we just get stuck in this rut. Why is that? It's because as neuroscientist Tali Sherrott says, and this is about neuroscience, about how our brain works. It's not about climate change. Fear and anxiety cause us to withdraw, to freeze, to give up rather than take action. So the whole world could be worried. But if we don't know what to do, we will do nothing. The reality is, is that this is not who we are. When you look at polling data in Ireland, when you look at polling data in North America, if you look at polling data in the EU, the rest of the EU, this is what we look like. There is a small group who claims they're not worried. I think they actually are, they're just better at denying it than others. There's a very large group who are worried. But if you're worried about something and you don't know what to do, why would you want to talk about it? Now we often mistake silence for lack of worry. And what that silence does is it allows the worry to grow, to feed off itself, to turn into paralysis, anxiety. And over here, only a tiny fraction are activated. Just a tiny fraction of the worried are activated. And the Yale program on climate communication dug into this. They found that in the United States, almost 70% are worried, but only 8% are activated. And they asked the people who were not activated but who were worried, why are you not activated? And you know what the number one reason was? Because nobody ever asked me to do anything and I don't know what to do. That's the number one reason. How do we address that? You guessed it. Through dialogue. That's how we tell people, share with people what they can do and that's how we invite them to participate. Isn't it much more important to move the worried people to the activated category than to move the people who claim they're not worried to the worried category? I think so. I think we could change the world if everybody in the blue moved to the green. So what does it take to move people from blue to green? Two things. And those things do not involve polar bears or ice sheets. Those two things involve, first of all, connecting all of the information we already have in our head, temperature change, sea level rise, increasing extremes, the climate crisis, connecting our head to our heart. How is it affecting the people, the places, the things we love? Number one. And then we have to connect our heart to our hands. What can we do about it? So why do we have to connect our head to our heart? Isn't that already happening? For most people, no. This is something called psychological distance where we humans, if we are confronted with a risk that we don't know how to address, we tend to push it away. We say, oh, it will affect people in the future, but not now. It will affect people who live over there, but not here. It's abstract global average temperature instead of what's happening, my electricity bill. And this is exactly what we do with climate change. So I showed you this map already of people who are worried about climate change. And then you ask them, will climate change affect people in the future, people who are far away from you in time? And you can see that the colors have gotten lighter. But they are still mostly red. Ireland is the same color. And then the researchers asked, do you think it will affect you? Look at that. So this shows we have all these worried people up here in their heads, even in Ireland, but they don't think it will affect them. They haven't connected the head to the heart. So what do we need to do? We need to talk about how climate change is not just happening in the future. It is happening right now, this year, this month, today. It is not only happening over there. It is happening right here in Ireland, increasing heavy precipitation events, increasing summer heat, longer, more severe droughts, more severe storms. It's not only happening in Florida or China or Bangladesh. It's happening in Ireland. We have to talk about how it's concrete. It is our homes, our livelihoods, our health that's at risk, our way of life. And we have to talk about how it's relevant to me. So when I talk about climate change, I talk about how I care about it because I'm a mother. And here's how it's affecting my child. I care about it because I live in Texas, which is extremely vulnerable to climate impacts. I talk about I care because I'm Canadian and I like to have snow in the winter. I talk about it how I'm a person of faith. And from every Christian tradition, as well as every other major world religion, there's a tradition of caring for and being a good steward of this incredible planet on which we live. So when we connect the dots and we make it relevant, we show people how who they are is already the perfect person to care. And we do that by talking about it, but there's one more piece. So head to heart, but we have to do heart to hands. How do we do that? Well, it turns out that people want solutions that give us a better life and a better world, not a worse one. Psychologically, we humans are more afraid to lose what we already have than to gain something better. And all too often climate change is framed in terms of loss. So I was talking to a man on Twitter the other day where I guess X as we have to call it and he said, I've been sacrificing all my life. And I just don't think we can get enough people to sacrifice to fix this. So it's not going to happen. And I said, well, the challenge is not the number of people the challenges you're asking everybody to as the president of COP apparently said to Mary Robinson two weeks ago, live in caves. He literally said that phasing out fossil fuels would require us to live in caves. And if that's the type of rhetoric that both the far, you know, we don't want to do anything and I'm already doing everything if both sides are saying that that's required to fix climate change. That is not going to work. What is going to work, showing people that clean energy is more affordable, not less than fossil fuels. It gives us cleaner air, not dirtier air than fossil fuels. The renewable and sustainable regenerative agricultural practices are better for our land for our animals for our people and for us, that there are solutions that are better not worse than the ones we have today. And the second ingredient here is that people are willing to change if they think what they're doing can make a difference. In the disasters that we see in the news, they actually decrease our sense of efficacy, rather than increasing it. We feel more hopeless, more helpless with the wildfires, the heatwaves, the droughts than we did before. So that's why when we have these conversations, it's so important to talk not only about the risks and about what they mean to us but about what real solutions look like. How do we tackle the lack of connection from the head to the heart, psychological distance, and from the heart to the hands? How do we tackle that? By doing the one thing that we're not. What is that? Well, here's the worry about climate change that we looked at before. And then the researchers asked one more question. They said, do you talk about it? Look at this. Most of the world is blue, Ireland is light pink, and the numbers here have shifted. Pink is no longer above 60%, pink is above 50%. So the conversations in Ireland are happening, maybe 50 to 60% of the people. Sweden is the darkest country. Germany is right behind Sweden and Finland and Germany. And that shows us the power of having these conversations because who is in Sweden starting conversations? I think we all know a young girl who just took a piece of white cardboard and painted a few words on that school strike for climate and sat outside the parliament has actually changed the color of an entire country. And as you can see, her impact is spreading. So in Ireland, this is a question specifically in Ireland from the climate change in the Irish mind report. How often do you discuss climate change with your family and friends in Ireland? People who are alarmed, less than half of them. Less than half. People who are alarmed. People who are concerned 21% often, 50% occasionally. And I get a lot of questions and the number one question I often get is how do I talk about it with people who don't want to talk about it? And my answer to them is why do you think they don't want to talk about it? Probably because they're worried and they don't want to talk about more doom and gloom. So what do we need to talk about? We need to talk about positive constructive solutions and how we can make a difference. And then people say, well, how do I talk to people who are bored? And I say, well, have you ever spoken to anyone who loves to fish? Someone who loves fishing can talk about fishing for hours. So if you're talking to people on their board, it's because you aren't talking about what they're passionate about. Figure out what they're passionate about. You can have conversations about climate change and rugby. Climate change and football. Climate change and beer. Climate change and beaches. You can have conversations about climate change and almost everything that people love. And if they are a rugby, a football, a beer, a beach fanatic, they could talk about it for hours. And then people say, well, how do I talk about it with my children? Our children get it. They understand that this thing is real and it's serious. More than ever with our children, we need to show them there are solutions. We are doing our part because we are the ones who are responsible, but they also have the ability to lend a huge hand if they want to. Because kids are phenomenal. Children are amazing at helping to affect change and they know how to use their voice. So what does talking change? Talking is not sufficient, but it is a key first step. I think about it like the first domino. It's a lot of work to knock over the dominoes individually, but if you can knock over the first domino, it will take four, six, ten dominoes with it. That's what talking does. It literally changes, psychologists tell us and social analysts tell us, it changes who we see ourselves as. Because what we talk about is a reflection of who we are. It changes what people around us think. It alters our sense of what is socially acceptable, our social norms. It changes our sense of self and collective efficacy. Do I think we can make a difference? And it changes our ability and willingness to act. If you don't talk about it, why would you care? And if you don't care, why would you do anything about it? So talk, as Sarah Peach says, who's an environmental journalist, she says, it's the fertile field in which cultural change begins in its absence. We can't fix a problem together. It is so obvious to us that we often just skip right over it. The goal of the conversation is not to tell people about why we care or why we're worried. It is to bring people into the conversation, to listen to what they have to say, to help them connect their heart to their head, their hands to their heart. And that will look different for every person. So climate changes and we get worried. Remember this? But what do we do? We load up on information on how climate change affects what we both care about. And if we don't know what that is, we need to be asking questions and listening rather than talking, and then positive constructive solutions. And what does this do? It empowers people rather than paralyzing them. And when people are empowered, that is when action results. Why? Because that is the way our human brain is wired. To go back to the neuroscience, the human brain is built to associate forward action with a reward, not with avoiding harm. So reframe your message. And I promise you, this is just a general analysis of how our brains work. It's not talking about climate change. But of course it is, right? So reframe your message, whatever that is. So the information you provide will induce hope, not dread. That is the secret to how we can catalyze change through dialogue. Because what we're doing is we're showing people that climate action is not a giant boulder with only one or two people trying to push it. And it will never move. When we catalyze conversations, when we break the climate silence, we show people how there's millions of people with their hands on that giant boulder, and it is already starting to roll down the hill in the right direction. And if they add their hand, and if we use our voice to encourage others to add theirs, it will go faster. This is the definition of hope. And when we talk about climate solutions, I don't only talk about climate, I talk about how they will also give us cleaner air and cleaner water. Climate solutions will help to protect us from disasters like storms and floods and heat waves. They will help us grow food in a better way, provide us with energy that is more affordable, reduce our inequalities rather than growing them, make our homes and our cities safer, give us a better world. Who doesn't want that? When we talk about what real climate solutions look like, at that point, the only question I'm often left with is, what are we waiting for? How can we get this going faster? And you know the answer to that. The answer is by starting a conversation today that helps to connect the head to the heart to the hands. Thank you. Thank you. That was just terrific. So it was, and I know that there's so much falling out of that, so much that we could pick up on. But before I do, can I just say that I might have put people off a little bit on the questions. I told you, you can upload questions, but you still have to actually ask questions, guys. And I know many of you will. And what we usually say is, look, put a question under the Q&A and do it whenever it occurs to you. So the uploading, the upvoting is just an added tool. It's not instead of, it's an added tool that lets us see which are the more popular questions. There's actually, thank you for it, Cap, because it's actually something I've seen working very well at conferences, and we should give it a bit of thought here at the IIA as well. But just if you're attending, if you're watching, if you're interested, you can ask a question. Don't be put off about the upvoting. That's something additional is not instead of. So Joseph Little has a question here. And it kind of, you know, it's one of the things when you were talking about things that are obvious, or, you know, people's level of knowledge and how that motivates them or whether it motivates them. Joseph Little said, surely given floods and storms this year and increased drought in Dublin, in the Dublin region, it's obvious to people that climate change is affecting them now. There's kind of a frustration coming from that question, understandably. Like, surely people, they should get it because we can see what's happening around us. But then you said something, if I hope I didn't miss quote, you kind of said sometimes something is so obvious that it doesn't necessarily motivate us to do something at all. And it can be something that's almost like overwhelms us and we feel, oh no. So anyway, that just occurred to be falling out of what you said. You're absolutely right. Oh, go ahead. Well, almost like a sort of a conflict that people need to know. So there needs to be communication. There needs to, you know, even if people don't see it before, I mean, they do see it. But if it's not impacting, well, then the media and everything does have an important role. So if we get the other side of that equation that says, look, overdo it, over cover it, you know, create a sense of catastrophe and then people walk away as well for the opposite reason. Exactly. So a number of years ago, they did an analysis of the images that accompanied BBC stories about climate change over the last decade. So the 2010s. The number one, and number two images that people used were polar bears and ice sheets. And so what that does is it creates that psychological distance. Because we don't see things happening where we are here and now we see things happening on the other side of the world and we think that that that matters to those people or those things, not even people, but not us. But then the other thing like you just said, Alex, and I think Joseph's question was referring to this, our human brain is not well suited to cope with this issue. We are very good at near term. We are terrible at long term. As I mentioned, we're very afraid of losing what we have. We're unmotivated to gain something new. And what does climate action require? It requires long term action that invests in something new, something better, but we might not see the immediate returns. So to for too long, we have failed to include the social science, the people who understand how the human brain works, how we absorb information, how we connect it to our actions, how we catalyze change. We have just taken a traditional physical science approach, which is more and more and more doom and gloom. But scientists have been sharing how bad it is for 60 years, actually more even the 1950s, scientists were warning how bad this would be. And just decade by decade, we've been warning more and more and what's happened not enough. Why is that it's because we haven't like I said, we have so much up here that we're top heavy. But we're not connecting it to what motivates us to care and then we're not connecting it to what we can do. So the maps I showed the global maps. That's a survey was recently updated, where they not only asked people are you worried and do you talk about it but they asked them. Why do you care. And they surveyed 70 countries around the world. And I think they expected to find maybe some different reasons but what they found was the number one reason around the world, why people cared was love. People they loved especially their children places they loved things they loved love is what motivates us to care. And if you analyze the climate dialogue. How often do you find the word love. Good. Kate Fagan has a question. How do we deal with the rising tide of voices saying it's too expensive to make these changes so we won't. Or yes we should have action on climate but I personally don't want to make any changes to my lifestyle. Like for example refusing to consider driving less flying less eating less meat. You know people are willing to change if they think it will make a difference but often people refuse to make individual choices because X celebrity is flying everywhere by private jet. So they say doing this won't make any difference or X country are doing this. So why should we that's it that the last one is a prominent enough argument in Ireland. And including from you know op ed writers one or two saying listen we're so small it's just tiny work you know what about China what about the US but about India Ireland is just you know a pimple. And even if we make radical change it's not going to do much for the for the broader problem. Yes, what's fascinating to me is that so I'm Canadian, and one of the biggest arguments in Canada is we are only 2% of the world's emissions so why does it matter. And then I live in the United States in the United States, every day, I hear someone saying well, you know, compared to China the US is nothing. And then every single country that I have spoken with people in or have questions from every country has said, we are nothing compared to everyone else. This is a classic human argument. And what is it. It is simultaneously an excuse. Because if we don't matter we don't have to do anything. And it is also at the same time, an acknowledgement of lack of efficacy. I don't think we can make a difference. It's both of those together. So, in the first case, it is one of the stages of denial. So climate denial has five stages. It's not happening, or it's not real, or you scientists are just making it up that stage one stage two is it's not human caused. It's not natural or it's been warmer before stage three. It's not bad. Wouldn't everybody like warmer weather, or the, you know, the planet will get greener stage four. It's too expensive to fix it, or we can't fix it. We should just deal with the impacts the cure is worse than the disease. That stage four so that is this an excuse, and then stage five is it's too late you really should have warned us earlier we can't do anything about it now. So these are the five stages of denial, and they are all aimed at the same goal which is preventing action as long as possible. So some people say, Ireland, Canada, any other country were just a tiny fraction of the problem, and they're saying that because they don't want to act. But some people are saying that genuinely because they lack efficacy. And let me tell you two stories one personal and one someone shared with me. I was speaking to a group in Virginia last year. And after I spoke a woman came up to me and she said, I have been so frugal my entire life. I have lived a very waste free life. She said at the end of every year you could collect my plastic waste in one small bag. And then she said but this past year I had a heart attack. And thankfully she was fine now, but she said I was in the hospital and in one day in the hospital, they would generate more plastic waste, taking care of me than I had used in 10 years. And so she came out of the hospital, well in body, but completely discouraged in spirit because she felt like everything she was doing was pointless. And then, when I measured my carbon footprint probably about 15 years ago now, I found out, much to my surprise at the time that the biggest part of my personal carbon footprint was flying. Not flying to vacations or yoga retreats. It was flying to scientific conferences and meetings. So I decided back then, long before zoom existed that I was going to transition 90% of my talks to virtual talks, and I did it, but it wasn't easy. This was well before the pandemic. And most people had never done this before. And when I travel I only travel when I can bundle multiple events into one trip. So when the pandemic hit in March, I was in Ireland. And I had bundled together 18 events in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Belfast, other places, 18 events to justify the trip to Ireland. And we, we, I think we made all but the last one at Trinity. I remember I was there. I was, I was driving from Belfast to Dublin, and I was getting the phone calls. Well, we can't have an audience but we'll just do it with the speaker's live. Well, we can't have the speaker's live but we'll just do it on zoom. Well, nobody knows what's going on so I think we'll just cancel it and reschedule it. I hope you escaped without, without getting COVID here, did you? No, I didn't get COVID there. I escaped, thankfully. I didn't get COVID until much later after the vaccinations. But that's fantastic. Yeah. Well, but so this is how carefully I travel. And then I heard that they were flying 3000 empty flights to keep Airlines gate assignments during that time. And I thought why bother. So here's what I realized though, this is based on a misconception that the most important climate action I can take as an individual is to reduce my personal carbon footprint. That's the misconception. How do we change the system? And how do we change the system? By not being such an individual by catalyzing change so that the easiest choice for everyone, the most affordable choice for everyone is the best choice. Public transportation is faster and more affordable than a car so that an electric vehicle is cheaper and easier to get than internal combustion engine. So regenerative agricultural practices are the norm rather than the exception. If we can change the system, that is how we can truly change our country and the world. And that begins with our voice. Sure. And that's what, you know, trans emphasizes the politics here as well, isn't it? And the fact, you know, if you look at Europe, a lot of people are talking about traveling in to and around Europe by rail. But of course, it just isn't as efficient or more importantly as cheap as it would need to be in order to get more people to do that. And that's, I mean, there's a lot of progress. There's no doubt about that. And, you know, European Green Deal, all the answers on public transport is so important in different countries, but it's got a long way to go. So behavior doesn't just have to depend on people sort of going, I'm going to change. It requires activism on all our parts to bring about those bigger changes, whether it's through carbon tax, ways of pricing services to emphasize the good ones. Listen, we've got some great questions coming in. I'm going to ask you two together. Remind our audience as well. If you think about when you put in your question, tell us who you are. And sometimes we know, and sometimes we don't know. So it's always nice just to give us your designation if you have one. So I'm going to put two to you together. Pauline McKeown mentions, when I read it first, I wasn't sure if I was reading correctly. I think that is what she means. It seems that solutions journalism is how the Irish media and broadcasting sector can best communicate with the population to drive behavior change at a national level. And Pauline is wondering if you have any examples of that from other countries or regions, and could we upskill broadcasters on this? And linked to that is Alison Kaye says, we need to hear more news about positive things that are being done globally. I completely agree. And the way I think about it is that we need to know how it's affecting us in ways that matter and what solutions look like at the same time. So we need stories about what is happening. Sometimes it's very subtle. I have been seeing so many interesting stories. A reporter called me up a few months ago and he said, I think there's a story about how climate change is affecting how people and when people file their taxes. And I said, what? And he said, well, when there is a declaration of disaster, then that county or city or in the United States, the state, they get a delay in when they can file their taxes. And we are having disasters now every three weeks rather than every four months as they used to be 50 years ago. So there's a big delay in when people file their taxes and that's actually affecting the revenue of the federal government. And I said, Oh my goodness, you're right. So there are stories about almost anything, but we need to be telling solutions at the same time. So as you mentioned, Alex, I have a newsletter. And I put a link in the chat there. I also have the newsletter on LinkedIn. And every week I share good news about what climate solutions look like. Not so good news about how climate change is affecting something we care about and what we can do to make a difference at the same time. And so we absolutely need the solutions journalism with a frame of here's why it matters. Here's why we're doing it for Ireland or for our city or for our county. And real world solutions that are not about CEOs or presidents or people who are very rich and wealthy and famous. We don't need more stories about Bill Gates, we need stories about what a farmer is doing, what a teacher is doing. What a city counsellor is doing when we need stories about what real people are doing, and they can truly have an impact because we can see ourselves in that. I love this question Karen Ashton. She says my my teenage son that's her teenage son and his friends are keen to go all out enjoying what they see is their last few years of fun before disasters hit near her home. Not an outspoken but of course imperfect environmental friendly life against all the other against general opinion, perhaps in her family or elsewhere. So she sees this as a personal failure. Although she says my son says he is spending carbon that I have saved up for your thoughts on this. Well, Karen, I have a teenage son also. You know, I empathize with you entirely. First of all, I want to comment Karen on what you said about imperfect. So often, we judge ourselves, and we judge each other. And as one of my favorite writers Mary and these Hegler said she said, she's an environmental writer she said, when I go to parties and people find out what I want to do what I do. She said they often want to confess their environmental sins to me as if I'm some type of eco none. And she said, I want to tell them that this is not your guilt. We were born into a system that forces are dependent on fossil fuels. I speak often with my colleagues who are climate scientists about this. All of us have taken steps to reduce our personal carbon footprint, but all of us know that we cannot be carbon free within this system. That is why we have to change the system. And so when we judge each other, shaming and guilting is a defense mechanism against fear and climate change and it's completely unproductive. It makes the person doing it feel good for a millisecond, and then they have to do it again. It makes the person they're doing to it discouraged and frustrated. But even worse when we judge ourselves, we are actually decreasing our efficacy. There is no perfection in this system. We must change the system. And so rather than qualifying what we do is imperfect, which of course it is by definition, it is always imperfect. And that is not our fault. I just wanted to comment on that part. But then in terms of the suns. We would love to be able to control other people, especially our children. But I think being a parent is a lesson, a lifelong lesson in realizing we cannot. What we have to do is we have to figure out what motivates them. And then we have to figure out how we could connect what we care about with what they care about. So I have no easy answers for you Karen, we would have to sit down and have a coffee or maybe a drink to really get to the bottom of this. I would bet with my speaking from my son and his friends to there are things that they care about passionately. And if we could help them connect what they care about, in some cases it might just be the acceleration that you get from an electric vehicle. Or it might be a place that they're passionately attached to and how it's being affected by climate change, or even just the ability to enjoy life is being affected. Figure out what they care about, help them see how that makes them the perfect person and find out what are some actions that they could take that they would enjoy. That would be fun. That would make them an even better version of who they are that would make them able to enjoy life even more, because it really is again about love. Ian Moran wonders how do we talk to people that have heard that they say they've heard that solar panels and electric vehicles and wind turbines are worse than oil and gas because of the mining and the toxic materials and so on that go into them. And you do hear that a lot, you know, people kind of set these sort of false dichotomies up where they say, you know, well, look, that's just as bad or you're still causing problems, even in, for example, manufacturing of electric vehicles and so on. But of course, the overall balance sheet is overwhelmingly, it seems to me anyway, the other way. So, Keene Moran says, there's so much misinformation out there on this that seems to be getting to some people in the worried category, as you've described them. Or is it just excuse me? Yeah. Yes. So that, again, is used by people both in bad faith and good faith. When they use it in bad faith, it's a variant of denial argument number four, the cure is worse than the disease. When they use it in good faith, it's because they're very concerned about the environment, but they haven't got their facts straight. So in both cases, it's important to directly address the misconception and I have a Twitter thread where I have done this. So if you're interested, I even have an Irish example in the Twitter thread. They'll put it in the chat in a minute. But in a nutshell, what we need to do when we hear false information is this address it directly, but briefly. So if someone said solar panels are worse than fossil fuels, I would say, no, they are not. Of course, we need to improve our mining practices of rare earth minerals and we need to figure out how to effectively recycle solar panels. But the amount of mining that occurs for renewable energy is like this, compared to the amount of mining that occurs for fossil fuels, which is like this. That don't stop there. What we need to do is we need to pivot immediately to talking about a positive solution. So in that case, I would pivot immediately to saying, and did you know that there are hundreds of millions of people who still live in energy poverty today and electricity is most highly correlated with human well being. And so that's why I'm so glad that solar energy is now the cheapest form of energy on the planet. And it is revolutionizing the lives of people who live in sub-Saharan Africa who were not able to go to school who are not able to have electricity. Solar is changing their lives. I'm so grateful for that or something like that, or you can talk about your own solar panels, or you can talk about your electric car. Pivoting, so address the misconception directly, but pivot immediately to talking about why solutions are positive, because otherwise they will just pop up with more and more objections. And our point is not to get the whole world convinced that we're right. That's never going to happen. Our goal is not even to get the whole world worried. Our goal is to get the whole world activated. And for activation, they need to understand why solutions work. And staying out of rabbit holes in terms of the argument. Emma Richardson is a researcher at the IIA and asks whether you would reflect on the inequality of impacts from climate change. As Mary Robinson, you mentioned Mary Robinson often references women and children, particularly in developing countries are most vulnerable to these impacts. And I think this is a way of gauging people's interests, quote unquote, and getting them to worry, quote unquote, at more about climate change. Emma wonders. Well, Emma, this is something that is very near and dear to my own heart. In fact, this is why I became a climate scientist. I always knew that climate was changing humans are responsible the impacts were serious, but I always thought of it as only an environmental problem that environmentalists were work on and environmentalists will fix. But I was always more concerned about issues of justice and equity and poverty and hunger. And so when I found out that climate change was an issue of injustice and inequity and enhancing poverty and hunger. That's when I decided to become a climate scientist. And I actually I recommend Mary's book frequently I just recommended it to my students last night. And I know that Mary actually recommends my book frequently as well I know because I see that on Twitter. And so we're very aligned in our concern in fact what I often say is climate change affects us all, but it doesn't affect us all equally. Those who are already marginalized in society today are the ones who are most vulnerable. 30 years ago, six, two thirds of the inequity was between countries between wealthier and poor countries was two thirds of the inequity, but now it's flipped. Two thirds of the inequity and climate impacts is within country. It is between rich and poor people in the same country. And that inequity is growing. So to answer your question directly though, does this help people connect the head to the heart. It's very sorry to say it only does that if people already care about it. If people already care about injustice in equity. Then, yes, 100% this helps them connect their head to the heart. But if they don't care that people in poor neighborhoods in the same city are more at risk than people in wealthy neighborhoods. If they don't care that woman and children are more vulnerable than men, especially in poor countries. If they don't care that immigrant populations in wealthy countries are more at risk. If they don't care that people in Sub-Saharan Africa are more at risk than people in Ireland, then that's not going to make them care more. I'm sorry to say. I wish it would. We have to figure out what people already care about because we don't have time to get everyone to care for the same reasons we do. We don't have time for that. On that Arlene Williams says one of the most effective ways to change a system is by transforming our people value because that underlies all the policies and choices that keep a system going. How can we talk about what we value and how that may need to change and before you before you address that because we are coming up on the hour. I'm sure you've got other commitments as people do and I also like to finish pretty much within the hour. We think it's to be fair to people. We've got some other questions there on the system that people can read. Francis Jacobs has an interesting point about it. Maybe a more nuanced message is better for some people, more impactful for some people than a dramatic message. What he means by that is, is it not better to admit that there's always been some climate change, but that the big change here, the big difference now is that this is human induced climate change, which has greatly reinforced natural changes that made the problem vastly more serious. So in other words, should there not be some concession that, yes, look, there has been, but this is of a completely different scale. He's just wondering that. And then the very last one is you might want to touch on Arlene Williams' point about what we value. We also had one or two of our questioners just asking us generally about the COP. And, you know, do you think, you know, what do you think of the cops generally? Are they, are they, you know, an initiative that we need to keep up with every year strikes me just one point I'll make about it. This is the third time I attend is a few years since I was at Paris and Lima before that, you know, without getting carried away. It is extraordinary that almost to the representatives of almost 200 countries will come together to address this crisis and will do so every year. Now they work in between as well, of course, as they have to do, but, you know, it's, it's, it is an awesome thing, I think still, you know, with all of the extraordinary problems that there are and pressures there are in the world, at the moment that, you know, it's not to be self congratulatory, but, you know, that humanity is responding, perhaps inadequately, but it is responding and the political representatives of governments are doing so as well, sometimes under pressure, by the way, that they have to do it. But they are coming together. Anyway, that's me attempting to sort of half answer a question that people are asking, and I'm not here to answer the question, but I just throw those points out and leave you to close in a way that you would like to like to do. Thank you so much, Alex. So, as we talk about things, that is how social norms change. And social norms have already changed enormously in our own lifetimes, let alone those of our parents, our grandparents and our great grandparents. For many of us, our great grandparents, they could, if they were a woman, they couldn't vote. My parents lived during the time when in the United States, if you were a black person, you couldn't sit at the front of the bus. I mean, that is just mind blowing to us today. The world has changed so quickly, what we value our social norms have changed, but how did they change? They changed by people using their voices to call for that change. So, now we have about 90,000 people, I think, in Dubai for COP. I, as I argued in my newsletter this week, and there's a link in the chat if you want to read my newsletter, I think that the future of climate action is at the regional scale. So, the Africa Climate Summit, the Latin America Climate Summit, New York Climate Week, I see these gatherings as growing and gathering steam, because they're much more open and democratic. You do have countries there, but you have companies, you have cities, you have universities, you have all kinds of different organizations there, all talking about climate solutions. The Paris Agreement is pretty much finalized. So, you know, COP, it accomplished its purpose. We have a Paris Agreement, we have all the articles, we have loss and damage fund, but now we need action. And action happens at a more granular level. So, I see the COP's shifting to more of a regional focus as they should in the future. I'm not COP's, but regional gatherings. But in all of those, the action happens, it begins at home. And how does it begin? It literally begins when someone uses their voice to say, why don't we do this? Why aren't we doing this? We should do this. Let's do this together. That is how action happens. And it can happen right where you are in your neighborhood, in your family, in the group of people that you play football with or you walk your dog with on weekends. It can certainly happen politically, not just with who we vote for, but how we engage with the political process, not only nationally, but at the level of the county, at the level of the city, at the level of every organization we're part of. That's how change happens. And what that means is who you are is the perfect person to begin that change where you are. Catherine, thank you very much for a really, really interesting and stimulating hour for your presentation. And by the way, for tailoring so much what you had to say to the Irish context, which I think people will really have seen that and really responded to that, that you would take the time to look at the Irish experience and some of the stats from Ireland, which I think was really noticed well, well noticed by our audience. So thank you for that. But thank you again for being with us. I really hope that we'd be able to persuade you to do so again sometime in the future. It's been just a fascinating hour. There's lots, lots more we could talk about. The importance of faith and so on for you, which is an important part of why you do this and motivating factor for you. But as I said, so much more that we could ask you about. We just don't have the time. That's the way it is. We had a really great hour. Thank you once again. And I hope we'll see you again before too long. Thank you also to our audience. Thank you Alex. Thank you all.