By Scott Stearman
In a meeting I attended at the Council on Foreign Relations, David Sandalow made a semi-funny 2-degree joke about climate change. Sandalow is a fellow at Columbia University and a former Undersecretary of Energy. He participated in a panel discussion in anticipation of the Paris climate summit. He noted that a widely discussed goal among those working on climate change policies is to keep the warming to a 2-degree increase. To most of us 2 degrees don’t sound like much. But Sandalow’s point is that those 2 degrees are registered in Celsius, which is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — something much closer to 4 degrees. 4 degrees does seem like something we feel. Could part of our American ambivalence to global warming be because of thermometer translation?
We clergy know all about translation issues. It gets to the heart of communication and hence to conveying what may be true, false or just ambiguous. Unfortunate translations of two Greek words that are in the New Testament, sometimes wrongly conveyed into English as “homosexual” but in the original had nothing to do with what we mean by the term today (two people of the same sex who love each other), has caused untold damage. This is only part of the difficulty on that topic, but it is a source of the hate directed at the LGBTQ community.
On the less serious side, all of us who have lived or traveled internationally have funny stories about language mishaps. Like the missionary to France who meant to say his past was clearly divided into two parts but said, in unintended French, “When I look at my rear, it is cleanly divided into two parts.” Needless to say, that was the end of the talk.
Besides the “temperature translation” issue, there are other, possibly more significant, communication quirks at work in the current climate change discussion. These contribute to our American ambivalence. If we can approach the urgency of our response to the climate crisis with these communication ideas in mind, we might build on the growing momentum that we see coming out of the talks in Paris.
First, we need to clarify that the crisis is not about hugging trees; it is about global security. The issue is not simply the poor polar bears and melting ice. It is about areas of the world that will become increasingly uninhabitable because of climate change. Recent evidence out of Syria demonstrates this with startling clarity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences compiled statistics showing that water shortages in the Fertile Crescent in Syria, Turkey and Iraq killed livestock, increased food prices, sickened children and forced 1.5 million rural residents to the outskirts of Syria’s overcrowded cities — just as that country was grappling with immigrants from the Iraq war.
There has been a figurative “perfect storm” of war and drought causing the current refugee crisis. However, while there may be some hope of stopping war (at least in theory) the process of climate change isn’t so easily halted. And yet knowing what climate change can unleash might motivate more of us to act. It might even persuade us to work at getting our congressional leaders to pull their heads out of the sand of denial.
Second, we should communicate more as oncologists who have a hopeful cure than pathologists who have diagnosed the disease. The science of climate change is clear and yet at this juncture not the central point. The person with a cancer diagnosis wants less to understand the genetic workings of the disease than the prognosis of a helpful treatment. Let’s move from discussing the amorphous and complicated science to discussing dirty air, pollution that kills millions every year, and the hope in renewable and cheap energy.
The former Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently addressed the issue in a similar fashion. He said, “Let’s put climate change aside for a minute. In fact, let’s assume [the skeptics are] right. First, do you believe it is acceptable that 7 million people die every year from pollution? That’s more than murders, suicides and car accidents — combined. Every day, 19,000 people die from pollution from fossil fuels. Do you accept those deaths? Do you accept that children all over the world have to grow up breathing with inhalers? … I don’t want to be the last investor in Blockbuster as Netflix emerged.”
The “cure” of climate change or the “best investment” of renewable and clean energy is hopeful language. And we need hope for as a climate expert recently said, “if we aren’t terrified we really aren’t paying attention.”
But we don’t have the luxury of pessimism. We must throw everything we can at minimizing greenhouse emissions. The work that Bill Gates is doing at building a coalition focused on part of the cure is a hopeful sign. May his tribe increase.
Third, we must be precise about where the hope is. We must speak honestly about scale of the problem and the inadequacy of the individual to do much about it. We must move from “lone ranger” action to “all hands on deck” urgency. We must find ways in our individualist, freedom-loving country, to be honest about what it will take to make an impact. Calking your windows, buying a Prius, getting an efficient refrigerator, are all good things to do. But all the virtuous acts in the world won’t bring the change needed. There have to be large scale governmental commitments for there to be a significant impact on green house gas emissions.
The reason we reached the moon, won World War II and built interstate highways is because we decided to do it nationally. If we are to cut the numbers for carbon emissions needed to keep global warming to 3.6 degrees, we will need a major policy commitment. It will be costly. But it will be inexpensive compared to the cost of dealing with a world that is warming beyond 4 degrees.
Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, an integrated, multi-national, energy company with 84,000 employees world wide, made this argument recently (at the same CFR meeting referenced earlier). We need, he said, regulations and policies that will create the platforms and incentives for companies to make progress on reducing green-house emissions. Descalzi leads a company that is heavily invested in oil and gas, but he knows the future is moving towards carbon free investment.
Most of the non-English speaking world understands that climate change is real and largely human made. Hence the onus is on we who speak “American” to communicate with clarity the reality in the sky. We face a real and dangerous enemy. That enemy is primarily ignorance. The good news is that ignorance can be cured by good communication.