Keynote: Andrew Hoffman

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

04/01/2021 Added

230 Plays

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Keynote address for the 2021 Great Plains Conference: "Climate Change & Culture in the Great Plains" with Dr. Andrew Hoffman, Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School for Environment & Sustainability. More from the conference at: https://www.unl.edu/plains/2021-great-plains-conference-page

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[00:00:00.681](upbeat music)
[00:00:10.579]Good afternoon everybody.
[00:00:11.779]It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:14.440]My name is Andy Hoffman,
[00:00:15.811]and what I want to do in my session today
[00:00:18.440]as the opening keynote is try and
[00:00:21.075]cover some ground,
[00:00:22.672]raise some questions,
[00:00:23.795]open some veins for conversation
[00:00:25.459]for the rest of this very worthwhile conference.
[00:00:28.957]I love the idea
[00:00:30.397]of thinking of climate change as a cultural issue.
[00:00:32.534]It's something that I've spent a lot of time focusing on
[00:00:35.155]and I think it is the critical approach,
[00:00:37.939]the critical lens to look at this issue.
[00:00:41.630]We live in interesting times.
[00:00:42.872]The extent to which science has become politicized,
[00:00:45.891]where people are debating facts,
[00:00:49.272]they're blurring opinion in fact,
[00:00:51.449]they are questioning
[00:00:52.568]previously trusted sources of information.
[00:00:56.292]I have just quoted to you
[00:00:58.006]the results of a study by the Rand Corporation
[00:01:00.090]called Truth Decay.
[00:01:02.351]And they warned
[00:01:03.348]that this is the existential crisis of our time.
[00:01:05.951]And if we don't do something about this
[00:01:07.071]how can you do anything on any number of issues
[00:01:09.812]if you can't agree on the facts?
[00:01:11.210]And the problem is these facts have become politicized.
[00:01:14.970]What I'm showing you here is a study done
[00:01:16.671]by the Pew Research Center.
[00:01:18.408]The white dot is the opinion of a survey of AAAS scientists.
[00:01:23.268]The blue dot is surveys of the American Public.
[00:01:26.409]This was done in 2014 but the phenomenon is still at play.
[00:01:30.671]And you can see where the arrow is,
[00:01:31.949]is a wide difference between the position of scientists
[00:01:35.267]and the position of the public on climate change
[00:01:37.770]and that's what we're here to talk about.
[00:01:39.667]But you can look at any number of issues on the top.
[00:01:41.370]Is it safe to eat genetically modified foods?
[00:01:44.486]51.0 gap between scientists and the public.
[00:01:48.960]We could even be talking about COVID right now.
[00:01:51.183]The extent to which people don't believe that COVID is real,
[00:01:54.362]or that masks don't work,
[00:01:57.432]or the the attacks that have been made on COVID scientists
[00:02:02.657]is truly alarming and truly impressive,
[00:02:06.261]and that speaks to the cultural dynamics of this issue.
[00:02:10.581]A lot of the work I've done on climate change
[00:02:13.242]comes to the conclusion that the debate over climate change
[00:02:16.202]really isn't about CO2 or climate models,
[00:02:19.861]it's about conflicting worldviews
[00:02:21.845]and people defending values
[00:02:23.221]that they feel are under attack
[00:02:24.885]by unacceptance of climate change.
[00:02:27.125]That's what happens when we put climate change
[00:02:29.297]on the level of culture.
[00:02:30.922]We start to understand values and beliefs,
[00:02:33.562]and how they create filters by which people look
[00:02:36.522]at the same information
[00:02:38.417]and come to very different conclusions.
[00:02:41.297]So what I wanna do is...
[00:02:42.602]My talk is in two parts.
[00:02:43.882]The first part,
[00:02:44.885]I just wanna summarize some of the work I've done
[00:02:46.863]to think about how to approach
[00:02:48.577]climate change from a socio-psychological point of view,
[00:02:52.602]and then what to do about it.
[00:02:54.021]There's part one.
[00:02:55.159]Part two, I wanna bring it up to date
[00:02:56.981]and hopefully raise some questions,
[00:02:58.779]look at some phenomenon
[00:03:00.427]that I think suggests that the culture is shifting.
[00:03:03.879]We are shifting as a country in our belief in climate change
[00:03:07.042]in some very interesting ways,
[00:03:08.485]some very visible ways,
[00:03:10.005]and some less visible ways.
[00:03:11.697]And that's what I wanna do with my time today.
[00:03:15.685]I wanna begin by covering just four points.
[00:03:19.178]If you look at climate change through the lens
[00:03:20.841]of social psychology.
[00:03:22.965]The first is we use cognitive filters.
[00:03:25.482]We are subject to what psychologists call
[00:03:27.682]motivated reasoning.
[00:03:29.525]We will accept something readily
[00:03:30.984]if it confirms our worldview,
[00:03:32.701]we will reject it quickly
[00:03:33.765]if it challenges our worldview,
[00:03:35.146]and that is the key.
[00:03:36.972]I say climate change, I know what I mean.
[00:03:40.003]You hear climate change, what do you hear?
[00:03:43.445]Those are two very different things
[00:03:45.544]and they're filtered through your cognitive filters,
[00:03:48.362]so your process of motivated reasoning.
[00:03:51.616]You know, we can use that in simple ways,
[00:03:54.266]we can use it in complicated ways.
[00:03:56.081]As a simple way, I'm driving down the street,
[00:03:58.362]I've started to hit a rattle
[00:03:59.549]in the front right corner of my car.
[00:04:01.920]What do I start to do?
[00:04:02.753]I start to thinking, "Well, there must be a loose bolt,
[00:04:04.692]a stone in the wheel." Something like that.
[00:04:08.648]I wanna get to a conclusion
[00:04:10.738]and I don't have to go to a mechanic.
[00:04:12.788]And we all do it with our health as well.
[00:04:14.300]"Oh, that ache, that's nothing. It's no big deal."
[00:04:16.527]Why? We don't wanna go to a doctor.
[00:04:18.135]And we don't look at evidence.
[00:04:19.854]We actually are biased in analysis of evidence
[00:04:23.584]through motivated reasoning.
[00:04:26.065]Where do those cognitive filters come from?
[00:04:29.301]Well, they reflect our cultural identity.
[00:04:31.337]Again, what psychologists
[00:04:32.578]particularly Dan Kahneman at Yale calls, cultural cognition.
[00:04:35.899]We will adopt beliefs that are consistent
[00:04:38.357]with the communities with which we identify,
[00:04:40.761]they are consistent with our tribe.
[00:04:43.101]We are very tribal in this country right now.
[00:04:45.546]Such that it used to be,
[00:04:48.186]I would pick my beliefs, understand them
[00:04:50.319]and identify with certain communities,
[00:04:53.052]and now in many ways that arrow is going the other way,
[00:04:55.488]where I identify with a community
[00:04:56.679]and I start to adopt beliefs that are consistent
[00:04:58.284]with that community.
[00:05:00.000]And that community could be, we are here in academia.
[00:05:03.596]It could be our church.
[00:05:05.103]It could be our work.
[00:05:06.364]It could be our town.
[00:05:07.739]It could be our friends.
[00:05:08.797]It could be any number of ways that we
[00:05:11.312]identify groups that we want to fit with.
[00:05:13.995]And it's very painful
[00:05:15.909]to stand out from a group of which you're a part.
[00:05:20.302]And every culture is part of that.
[00:05:22.287]You know, the debates over what's going on
[00:05:23.913]in higher education and the extent to which
[00:05:25.955]certain ideas have become sacrosanct
[00:05:29.002]that you can't challenge them
[00:05:30.177]is part and parcel of what we're describing here.
[00:05:33.695]So who we identify as our tribe
[00:05:35.165]and who identify as representatives,
[00:05:37.684]or spokes people of that tribe is critically important.
[00:05:41.049]Let me offer you two names on the climate change debate.
[00:05:45.458]And one, I can do this with any audience
[00:05:48.165]whether they believe in climate change or not.
[00:05:50.257]One, they're likely to say,
[00:05:51.444]"I don't believe a word that person says,"
[00:05:52.854]the other, "I believe most of what that person says,"
[00:05:55.749]Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore.
[00:05:59.118]Who do you think represents you?
[00:06:00.730]I can do this also with media sources.
[00:06:02.949]Who do you go to as a trusted source of information,
[00:06:06.008]NPR, Fox News?
[00:06:08.285]And in fact there's actually a research to show
[00:06:10.764]that the more you listen to Fox News,
[00:06:12.535]the less you believe in climate change,
[00:06:14.345]the more you listen to NPR,
[00:06:15.694]the more you believe in climate change.
[00:06:17.419]These become our filters.
[00:06:19.320]Social media is also a form of this filter.
[00:06:22.233]If we were standing in an audience
[00:06:23.451]that I could actually look out over the crowd,
[00:06:25.337]I would ask you,
[00:06:26.170]"How many of you have unfriended somebody on Facebook
[00:06:29.413]because they said something you didn't like
[00:06:31.296]or disagree with?"
[00:06:33.034]And then chances are a number of you would raise your hands
[00:06:36.470]and I would say, "You are creating your filter bubble.
[00:06:39.215]You are narrowing your community to your tribe,
[00:06:43.010]and you're excluding people that don't fit in
[00:06:45.853]with your tribe."
[00:06:46.881]And that is happening in many ways
[00:06:49.151]in our country right now
[00:06:50.436]and climate change is landing on there.
[00:06:53.513]All this leads up to the idea that cultural identity
[00:06:55.815]can overpower scientific reasoning.
[00:06:57.702]Psychologists say we're cognitive misers.
[00:06:59.746]We have a certain amount of cognitive ability,
[00:07:01.811]and we spend it very frugally.
[00:07:05.407]Max Weber, famous sociologist from the turn
[00:07:08.225]of the last century, not this century,
[00:07:11.029]had a point that I really liked.
[00:07:12.783]He said, "We get through our day by activating black boxes."
[00:07:16.179]And what he means was,
[00:07:17.684]I get in my car, I turn it on,
[00:07:19.015]I don't know how it works but it gets me where I need to go.
[00:07:21.309]I get on a plane,
[00:07:22.142]I don't know how a jet engine works
[00:07:23.325]or air traffic control works,
[00:07:24.485]it gets me where I need to go.
[00:07:26.116]I go to the doctor,
[00:07:27.451]and the doctor says, "You need a new hip."
[00:07:30.580]I can choose to open that black box, and in fact I did.
[00:07:34.426]I started looking at videos of hip replacement
[00:07:36.610]and my wife looked at me
[00:07:37.863]and watching my face turning green and says,
[00:07:40.190]"I really don't think you better look at that."
[00:07:42.438]What do I do?
[00:07:43.271]I close the black box.
[00:07:44.592]I put my trust in the doctor,
[00:07:46.683]and the surgery,
[00:07:47.516]and the system.
[00:07:49.010]And we need to do this to get through our day.
[00:07:51.180]If you had to open every single black box
[00:07:52.900]that you activate today,
[00:07:54.557]there's a good chance you couldn't get through your day.
[00:07:56.326]If you couldn't eat the food in front of you
[00:07:57.967]without knowing exactly how it got there, you may go hungry.
[00:08:01.113]If you couldn't choose your clothing
[00:08:02.758]without knowing if the workers were paid a fair wage,
[00:08:05.639]whether the cotton was organically grown,
[00:08:07.672]all these kinds of things, you'd have a spare wardrobe.
[00:08:11.176]And so we are cognitive misers.
[00:08:13.325]And it can play out again in complicated ways,
[00:08:15.592]in simple ways.
[00:08:16.425]Complicated ways.
[00:08:17.600]How many of you read all the IPCC reports?
[00:08:20.506]I'm willing to bet not many,
[00:08:23.156]but you trust the science.
[00:08:25.061]You have chosen to trust the science,
[00:08:26.811]you have chosen to trust the black box
[00:08:29.091]or maybe you've looked some of them.
[00:08:31.154]Others out there may say, you know,
[00:08:32.501]"I don't look at the science but,
[00:08:34.151]you know, my pastor seems to really understand the science.
[00:08:36.980]I'm gonna trust my pastor."
[00:08:39.156]Or, "The neighbor down the road
[00:08:40.375]seems to be up on the topic, I'm gonna trust that person
[00:08:43.022]rather than some liberal professor from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
[00:08:46.856]Why would I trust him?"
[00:08:48.734]And we can also do it in simple ways.
[00:08:50.498]I can remember vividly
[00:08:52.153]the first time I went to an organic grocery store,
[00:08:54.857]and walked into the cereal aisle,
[00:08:57.070]saw a wall of cereal I had never seen before.
[00:09:00.418]And was previously a very simple decision,
[00:09:02.507]I walk in, I grab my Cheerios and I walk out,
[00:09:05.258]now required time, thought and effort,
[00:09:09.049]and I was annoyed.
[00:09:10.586]And I was new nervous
[00:09:11.718]because if it took this long to buy my cereal,
[00:09:14.182]this is gonna be a very long grocery store trip
[00:09:16.306]and I did not plan for it.
[00:09:18.104]There's the idea that we're cognitive misers.
[00:09:20.382]We look for shortcuts.
[00:09:21.771]And that also leads to some pretty simple ideas
[00:09:26.100]about the science that's around us.
[00:09:28.177]Jonathan Haidt,
[00:09:29.477]whose work I really admire
[00:09:30.954]describes it that in many complicated issues,
[00:09:33.743]particularly around science,
[00:09:35.287]we don't act like scientists we act more like lawyers.
[00:09:39.213]And what he says was,
[00:09:40.985]when we are faced with an issue that's complicated,
[00:09:43.573]especially if it's politically inflected
[00:09:45.413]like climate change, our emotions kick in really fast.
[00:09:49.646]Maybe it was said by someone you trust or don't trust,
[00:09:51.754]maybe it triggered some kind of response inside you,
[00:09:54.710]and you reach a conclusion based on your emotions,
[00:09:56.743]really fast.
[00:09:58.267]Your reason is coming in a very distant second.
[00:10:01.657]And what is your reason doing?
[00:10:03.265]It's like looking for information
[00:10:04.679]to confirm the position that your emotions came to
[00:10:07.270]in the first place.
[00:10:08.337]There's those first three things in play.
[00:10:10.928]That's what Jonathan Haidt is talking about.
[00:10:12.726]And I would add a fourth
[00:10:13.855]that has to be put into this conversation.
[00:10:16.740]Our social and political economy creates resistance
[00:10:19.158]and inertia for change.
[00:10:21.344]The war on science that we have right now,
[00:10:24.382]the attacks for example, on Anthony Fauci,
[00:10:27.716]are really resisting the conclusions that come from there.
[00:10:31.293]People rejecting the science that vaccines are healthy.
[00:10:36.196]Jenny McCarthy,
[00:10:37.650]Robert Kennedy Jr. saying that vaccines are dangerous,
[00:10:40.679]they cause autism and even though
[00:10:42.463]the science is not clear.
[00:10:44.711]In the middle there I have a small box
[00:10:47.021]with a lot of writing.
[00:10:48.310]There's a problem here also
[00:10:49.986]in our political and social economy of
[00:10:52.215]pseudo-scientific journals,
[00:10:54.764]or people with political interests
[00:10:57.267]putting their ideas out there
[00:10:58.586]and the public not able to tell the difference.
[00:11:01.624]And if you're in academia
[00:11:02.740]I'm sure you've come across pseudo-scientific journals.
[00:11:04.831]I myself have been invited to be an editor in chief
[00:11:07.635]of a medical journal, of an engineering journal.
[00:11:10.709]There are journals out there that
[00:11:11.945]all you have to do is pay money,
[00:11:13.883]and you can publish your paper.
[00:11:15.993]So that one in the middle,
[00:11:17.466]and excuse my language for a second.
[00:11:19.447]Here's a trigger warning.
[00:11:20.671]What I'm gonna say is slightly R-rated
[00:11:22.750]but some scientists wanted to prove
[00:11:24.857]what a joke these journals were,
[00:11:27.524]and so they published a paper.
[00:11:28.836]And you can look this up and the journalist called,
[00:11:31.691]"Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List."
[00:11:33.770]And they use the real word in there.
[00:11:35.613]And that paper if you look it up,
[00:11:37.506]is that sentence over and over again.
[00:11:40.308]All they did was, they paid a fee
[00:11:42.247]and the paper was published.
[00:11:43.813]That one, obviously, was a joke.
[00:11:45.548]But there's a lot of literature out there
[00:11:47.601]it's not easy to tell,
[00:11:49.610]and the public is being deceived.
[00:11:52.090]And then to the left of that,
[00:11:53.173]and I think this is very important.
[00:11:54.462]This is a book that's called,
[00:11:56.198]Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.
[00:11:59.530]And it's not by the IPCC it's by the NIPCC,
[00:12:03.017]the Non Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
[00:12:05.651]which is actually not really a group.
[00:12:07.218]It's the Heartland Institute,
[00:12:08.780]which is the number one climate skeptics group
[00:12:10.487]in the country.
[00:12:11.773]They produced this book,
[00:12:13.525]and I put that in very heavy quotations and say that,
[00:12:16.270]scientists actually don't think
[00:12:17.431]that climate change is happening.
[00:12:19.490]Now you can look at that and say,
[00:12:20.696]"Okay, they're speaking to their climate change
[00:12:22.486]or climate denial audience."
[00:12:24.228]But they publish this book,
[00:12:25.942]and they distributed copies free
[00:12:28.591]to science teachers in K-12 education
[00:12:30.734]trying to change the curriculum
[00:12:32.792]that young people are receiving on climate change.
[00:12:35.709]There is a very dark side
[00:12:38.344]of the extent to which the political and social economy
[00:12:40.529]creates resistance of change.
[00:12:43.074]Oh, that's not supposed to be there.
[00:12:45.287]All that leads to the conclusion, sorry about that,
[00:12:48.726]that once our minds are made up
[00:12:51.193]and our position aligns with our cultural identity,
[00:12:54.029]providing additional scientific data
[00:12:55.856]can make us more resolute
[00:12:57.328]in resisting conclusions that are at variance
[00:12:59.047]with our cultural beliefs.
[00:13:00.725]In other words, when you meet someone
[00:13:02.505]who doesn't believe climate change is real,
[00:13:04.595]and you whip out your PowerPoint deck
[00:13:06.197]and give them a science lesson,
[00:13:08.132]they're digging their heels in this.
[00:13:09.669]"I've already looked the science.
[00:13:10.990]I hear something else."
[00:13:12.428]So what do you do?
[00:13:13.390]You get another PowerPoint deck
[00:13:14.882]and they start to dig their heels in really hard.
[00:13:17.856]You need to understand why they distrust the science
[00:13:21.452]in order to move forward.
[00:13:23.045]You need to understand the subtext of the conversation.
[00:13:25.730]That's what I wanna focus on.
[00:13:27.188]I had one slide slightly out of order.
[00:13:29.168]I wanna go back to it and that is this,
[00:13:32.858]this is some work by Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap.
[00:13:35.523]I really like it.
[00:13:36.424]I only take it up to 2010
[00:13:38.222]and I'm gonna return to this
[00:13:39.631]but I want to show you this,
[00:13:41.162]to show you that between 2001 and 2010
[00:13:44.265]belief in climate change
[00:13:45.952]actually declined among Republicans
[00:13:48.080]and increased among Democrats,
[00:13:49.702]declined among conservatives
[00:13:51.242]increased among liberals.
[00:13:52.771]This to me is the smoking gun that this is a cultural issue.
[00:13:56.388]So conservatives and liberals,
[00:13:57.425]Republicans and Democrats
[00:13:58.752]taught about science any differently? No.
[00:14:01.472]Do they look at it through a different lens? Yes.
[00:14:04.059]It is a cultural lens.
[00:14:05.159]It's a cognitive filter.
[00:14:07.114]How can we understand those cognitive filters,
[00:14:09.577]so we can bridge this divide?
[00:14:12.659]I'm gonna give you a little foreshadowing.
[00:14:14.678]The second part of my talk is gonna tell you
[00:14:15.866]this divide is narrowing,
[00:14:17.990]which should give us some hope
[00:14:19.125]that we're going in the right direction.
[00:14:21.173]So with that as a start,
[00:14:22.874]how do we overcome distrust?
[00:14:25.077]And I wanna focus on four forms of distrust,
[00:14:27.214]ways to overcome them,
[00:14:28.417]and then I wanna bring us up to date.
[00:14:30.532]And I think that'll take us up to our time.
[00:14:32.935]The first form of distrust is people distrust the messenger.
[00:14:36.671]They distrust who's speaking about it.
[00:14:37.940]The best way to describe this,
[00:14:39.135]is the messenger is as important as the message.
[00:14:42.111]If Andy Hoffman professor at the
[00:14:44.013]University of Michigan says something,
[00:14:45.924]or the Pope says the exact same thing
[00:14:49.292]or Sean Hannity says the exact same thing,
[00:14:52.775]you will hear three different messages.
[00:14:56.339]The messenger changes how we view the message.
[00:14:59.533]And one problem on climate change is that the debate
[00:15:02.201]has primarily been engaged by environmentalists,
[00:15:05.034]democratic politicians and scientists.
[00:15:06.832]And there are people in the American public
[00:15:08.324]that distrust one, two, or all three of those groups.
[00:15:11.763]Democratic politicians that's obvious,
[00:15:13.622]you know, just the partisan divide in this country
[00:15:15.562]is pretty clear.
[00:15:16.802]Environmentalist.
[00:15:18.157]A lot of people distrust environmentalist.
[00:15:19.931]They see them as socialists, borderline communist.
[00:15:22.642]They wanna use the state to control their lives.
[00:15:26.371]There's an expression
[00:15:27.805]within the climate skeptic community
[00:15:30.084]that environmentalist are watermelons.
[00:15:32.547]They may be green on the outside
[00:15:33.926]but they're red on the inside.
[00:15:36.003]Don't trust them.
[00:15:37.474]And then many people don't trust scientists.
[00:15:39.539]And this may surprise some of you,
[00:15:41.089]it may not surprise others of you
[00:15:43.630]and it's not a new idea.
[00:15:46.119]Hofstadter wrote a book in 1964,
[00:15:49.381]Anti-intellectualism in American life.
[00:15:51.522](indistinct) surprise.
[00:15:53.019]And what he described was
[00:15:54.322]that there are many people in this country
[00:15:55.719]that distrust scientists.
[00:15:57.288]They sit in an ivory tower,
[00:15:59.030]they are sipping lattes.
[00:16:00.880]They are talking about things I don't understand,
[00:16:04.010]using a language I can't comprehend.
[00:16:06.151]They have a disproportionate influence
[00:16:07.499]on the political process.
[00:16:08.954]I don't trust them.
[00:16:10.413]So these come out.
[00:16:11.991]I have a whole different avenue of my work
[00:16:15.464]that scientists are at heart responsible for that
[00:16:18.411]because of a certain distance they create
[00:16:21.233]between themselves and the general public.
[00:16:23.937]We can go into that if you want,
[00:16:25.909]but this is a problem.
[00:16:27.427]How do we overcome it?
[00:16:29.037]We need climate brokers.
[00:16:30.370]Find climate brokers.
[00:16:31.660]So I want evangelicals to hear it from evangelicals.
[00:16:34.847]I want business people to hear it from
[00:16:36.182]business community representatives they trust.
[00:16:38.679]I want the farmer to hear it from the farmer down the road.
[00:16:41.328]I want people to hear it at the Qantas Club.
[00:16:43.659]You need to have people saying this message
[00:16:46.164]that reach audiences that they trust,
[00:16:48.380]part of their tribe.
[00:16:49.921]So if you're in a debate on climate change
[00:16:52.430]I would be careful about,
[00:16:54.408]if you're talking to a climate skeptic invoking Al Gore,
[00:16:57.554]or the EPA or the Environmental Defense Fund.
[00:17:00.546]I might invoke an evangelical
[00:17:02.818]or someone from the business community
[00:17:06.068]or someone from the military,
[00:17:08.084]or any conservative Republican.
[00:17:09.956]Find somebody they trust,
[00:17:11.958]use that person as the messenger, as your expert.
[00:17:15.817]I think the most important brokers
[00:17:17.520]we need are from the market
[00:17:19.210]and from the political right,
[00:17:21.290]and that is changing.
[00:17:22.716]And I'll talk about that later.
[00:17:24.294]Those are starting to come forward.
[00:17:26.729]The second form of distrust
[00:17:27.704]is they distrust the process that created the message.
[00:17:30.590]There are a lot of people who believe
[00:17:31.904]the scientific review process is corrupt.
[00:17:34.045]I've had that said to my face by a climate skeptics.
[00:17:38.261]The argument is that,
[00:17:39.456]you will only get published if you satisfy
[00:17:41.795]the political interest of the editor.
[00:17:43.449]You will only get funding
[00:17:45.656]if you satisfy the political interest of the funders.
[00:17:49.942]And then, obviously, they distrust
[00:17:51.295]the United Nations and particularly the IPCC.
[00:17:54.831]This is an attack on our national sovereignty.
[00:17:56.878]A lot of people think
[00:17:57.774]we should get out of the United Nations.
[00:17:59.482]So when they come out and say,
[00:18:00.924]we need to constrain our economy,
[00:18:03.028]which is what they here,
[00:18:04.330]to address climate change from some foreign body
[00:18:06.781]that they don't trust their back gets up.
[00:18:10.084]What do we do about it?
[00:18:10.997]Well, there actually is a strong correlation
[00:18:13.432]between a belief in the scientific consensus
[00:18:15.567]and a belief in climate change.
[00:18:17.040]And I think this is very important.
[00:18:18.718]When I engage in a debate with a climate skeptic.
[00:18:22.083]This is where I go first in my response,
[00:18:25.863]I will say, "Well, 200 scientific agencies say this is real
[00:18:30.805]and that's pretty good enough for me. I trust them."
[00:18:34.326]Now you even go further say, you know,
[00:18:36.151]"I believe that someone called it an atom.
[00:18:38.878]I believe is a nucleus with electrons flying around it.
[00:18:40.662]I believe my body is made up of billions of these.
[00:18:43.454]I will never see one
[00:18:44.460]but I believe it's true because I trust the science."
[00:18:47.410]What do you know that the scientific experts do not?
[00:18:50.474]And I go down that direction.
[00:18:51.574]And there is scientific research to show,
[00:18:53.594]survey data to show, that if you can convince people
[00:18:56.426]that there is a scientific consensus on this issue
[00:18:59.450]they start to move.
[00:19:00.966]So at the end of the day the truth is,
[00:19:03.416]people do trust science.
[00:19:05.123]They trust science every time they go to the hospital,
[00:19:07.214]they trust science every time they help their kids
[00:19:09.508]with their chemistry and biology homework,
[00:19:11.678]they do trust science.
[00:19:13.447]And then separate the problem from the solution.
[00:19:15.506]When people say, "I don't believe in climate change
[00:19:16.903]because I don't want a carbon price."
[00:19:18.609]You can say, it would be an honest conversation and say,
[00:19:20.296]"Climate change is real,
[00:19:21.210]but I think a carbon price is a bad idea.
[00:19:23.350]Don't go down that rabbit hole."
[00:19:25.630]Third, they distrust the message itself.
[00:19:27.302]And I think this one's critically important.
[00:19:29.365]One, they have discomfort with climate scenarios.
[00:19:34.068]You know, the pictures of Florida underwater
[00:19:38.322]or the movie, The Day After Tomorrow
[00:19:40.339]with Manhattan underwater
[00:19:41.534]and glaciers going down Madison Avenue,
[00:19:43.526]people shut down.
[00:19:44.882]Most people think the world is a pretty nice place.
[00:19:48.021]That the sun will rise, the sun will set,
[00:19:50.536]tomorrow will be another day.
[00:19:52.069]And when you present these doomsday scenarios
[00:19:54.770]people typically start to shut down.
[00:19:57.522]I'm gonna return to this one
[00:19:58.684]because there's a very good debate
[00:19:59.864]around this question of whether,
[00:20:01.154]this is really something we should avoid
[00:20:03.044]but I'll get back to that.
[00:20:04.796]And then the second is a belief in God
[00:20:06.560]and I think this is critical important.
[00:20:08.733]If anything in this whole talk gets you to see that,
[00:20:12.425]when you say climate change
[00:20:14.203]and somebody hears something totally different,
[00:20:16.403]and you don't know why you're just facing this opposition,
[00:20:19.880]this one should do it.
[00:20:20.915]I've been heckled at a talk
[00:20:22.756]by someone holding up a Bible and saying,
[00:20:24.716]"The seas can not be rising 'cause God promised Noah
[00:20:27.380]he would never flood the earth again."
[00:20:29.658]If you about a PowerPoint deck on climate change
[00:20:31.844]from the IPCC that will make no traction with this person,
[00:20:35.841]and that's critically important.
[00:20:38.779]It shows you the cultural divide on this.
[00:20:41.852]What is the solution?
[00:20:43.510]Find a broker frame.
[00:20:44.690]Find a frame that the people you're talking to will trust,
[00:20:48.223]will resonate with.
[00:20:49.588]You could frame climate change as an economic issue.
[00:20:52.977]We better develop the next generation of
[00:20:55.373]alternative drive trains or renewable energy,
[00:20:57.681]or Germany or China will do it.
[00:20:59.525]We don't want that.
[00:21:00.800]You can frame this as an issue of national security.
[00:21:02.978]There's a group called the CMA.
[00:21:07.027]Oh, boy.
[00:21:08.285]I'm blanking on the name.
[00:21:09.667]But a group of retired army generals
[00:21:11.434]who came to the conclusion
[00:21:12.980]that climate change is a threat multiplier.
[00:21:15.324]That as it starts to destabilize regions
[00:21:17.603]you start to have climate refugees
[00:21:20.378]and we could have some problems on the Southern border.
[00:21:23.457]There is some research to suggest
[00:21:24.558]that a lot of the strife in Syria is driven in part
[00:21:27.847]by people in the country who could no longer grow crops
[00:21:30.574]moving into the city,
[00:21:31.737]creating more density and causing some problems.
[00:21:34.635]You could frame it as a health issue.
[00:21:36.138]This is a particularly potent one,
[00:21:37.797]that the Lancet caused climate change
[00:21:39.624]is the number one health issue of the 21st century.
[00:21:42.199]You can frame it as a risk management issue.
[00:21:45.175]People could say, "This is a low probability event."
[00:21:47.870]Fair enough.
[00:21:49.277]It's a low probability high consequence event
[00:21:51.545]and we know how to handle those.
[00:21:53.010]For example, I have fire insurance on my house.
[00:21:55.059]That's a low probability high consequence event.
[00:21:57.337]Probably not gonna happen,
[00:21:58.379]but if it does I'm gonna be in serious financial trouble.
[00:22:01.491]What do I do? I take out insurance.
[00:22:03.880]What do we do? We take out insurance on climate change,
[00:22:06.566]we invest in behavior change,
[00:22:08.332]we invest in technology change,
[00:22:10.088]that's called insurance.
[00:22:11.368]So find a broker frame that works for your audience
[00:22:14.916]and avoid cataclysmic scenarios.
[00:22:16.802]I'm gonna come back to that, but I think it's important.
[00:22:19.439]Finally, they distrust the solutions
[00:22:21.269]that come from the message.
[00:22:22.929]So you may argue, we need to have a carbon price.
[00:22:25.349]Well, what you argued for
[00:22:26.539]is a pretty intrusive government program
[00:22:28.974]that will hit all aspects of the economy.
[00:22:32.232]And that is a raging debate in this country right now
[00:22:34.818]with some wanting to reduce the size of government,
[00:22:37.513]and one wanting to expand it.
[00:22:39.840]And there you stepped on a landmine,
[00:22:41.354]and then you can say, "We need a global carbon price."
[00:22:44.395]And now you've stepped on a huge landmine
[00:22:46.268]because people hear one more government,
[00:22:48.641]they hear control and they don't like.
[00:22:51.539]What do you do?
[00:22:52.372]Well, first of all, move beyond the negative.
[00:22:54.858]Don't frame climate change as a negative.
[00:22:57.433]Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote an essay
[00:22:59.677]a number of years ago called the Death of Environmentalist.
[00:23:02.109]And they really tried to point this out that,
[00:23:03.257]one of the problems that a lot of people
[00:23:05.676]in the environmental movement have of getting traction
[00:23:07.638]is they're always on the negative.
[00:23:09.867]And the negative doesn't inspire
[00:23:11.447]people to strive for greatness.
[00:23:13.741]They make it a point in a very humorous way
[00:23:15.200]that may stick for you.
[00:23:17.155]They say, "Think about it.
[00:23:18.838]One of the most inspirational speeches of all time
[00:23:21.257]was not called I have a nightmare,
[00:23:23.599]it was called I have a dream."
[00:23:25.675]And if you can frame this in the positive
[00:23:28.065]that this is an opportunity
[00:23:29.274]for American ingenuity and competitiveness,
[00:23:31.848]now you're really talking.
[00:23:33.549]Now people will go with you.
[00:23:35.102]And this is a framing that I like to use,
[00:23:37.297]particularly with my students
[00:23:38.682]'cause I am in a business school.
[00:23:40.570]And I will talk about this as a market opportunity
[00:23:43.566]not as a market constraint.
[00:23:45.592]I'm gonna get into that.
[00:23:47.319]So there is the gist of what I wanted to do
[00:23:49.760]in the first half of my remarks.
[00:23:52.198]This is the subtext of the debate.
[00:23:54.058]When you find someone who doesn't believe in climate change
[00:23:57.220]focus on these four forms of distrust.
[00:23:59.904]Don't whip instantly think
[00:24:01.108]you're just gonna give them a science lesson.
[00:24:03.188]Do they distrust the messengers?
[00:24:04.333]Do they distrust the process?
[00:24:06.324]Distrust the message,
[00:24:08.178]they distrust the solutions.
[00:24:10.410]You need to overcome distrust.
[00:24:12.349]Let me give you an example,
[00:24:13.568]I'm in a golf league.
[00:24:15.122]And what I like about this golf league
[00:24:16.809]is that we don't talk about work at all.
[00:24:18.892]We just play golf and we drink beer,
[00:24:21.325]and it's more of the latter and less of the former.
[00:24:24.351]And I wasn't in the league one day
[00:24:25.970]and I'm sitting on the trunk of my car
[00:24:28.184]and I'm lacing up my golf shoes and the guy next to me,
[00:24:30.914]Greg, is sitting on the trunk of his car,
[00:24:32.772]is lacing up his golf shoes.
[00:24:34.107]I've played the league for five years and he finally says,
[00:24:36.214]"Andy, what do you do for a living anyway?"
[00:24:37.527]And I say, "Well, I'm a professor."
[00:24:39.465]He goes, "Oh, yeah. What do you study?"
[00:24:41.298]And I'm, "Business and environmental issues."
[00:24:43.851]And he instantly said,
[00:24:45.090]"You mean like climate change? That's not real, is it?"
[00:24:49.167]Now what do you do?
[00:24:50.171]What do I do?
[00:24:51.004]I give him a science lesson.
[00:24:52.958]Chances are, he's not gonna engage on that.
[00:24:56.106]Maybe he will, maybe he won't.
[00:24:57.726]I could talk about the partisan divide.
[00:24:59.508]For all I know he's a conservative Republican.
[00:25:01.554]I could talk about different ways
[00:25:02.995]that we have unsustainable lifestyles knowing full well,
[00:25:06.604]he loves that Hemi motor under the hood of his car
[00:25:09.490]and he's very proud of the house
[00:25:11.116]that he has provided for his family.
[00:25:14.140]That is a sign of success.
[00:25:16.215]Any one of those ways is gonna be a problem.
[00:25:19.364]So what do I say?
[00:25:20.542]I said, "Well, you know,
[00:25:21.638]200 scientific agencies around the world say it's real.
[00:25:23.655]That's good enough for me."
[00:25:26.357]Oh, he says, "Andy, honest to God, next question, Andy,
[00:25:29.731]are you a Democrat or Republican?"
[00:25:31.859]And I said, 'Well, I'm an independent."
[00:25:34.199]"Oh, okay. Third question, Andy,
[00:25:36.476]what do you think of Al Gore?"
[00:25:38.878]And I say what I say in my book, I say,
[00:25:40.581]he called attention to the issue,
[00:25:42.754]but unfortunately perceptions of him
[00:25:44.598]politicize the issue as a democratic liberal issue."
[00:25:48.300]Oh, the conversation ended and we went to play golf.
[00:25:52.423]And I've often thought about that.
[00:25:53.770]What was he doing with those questions?
[00:25:55.816]He was trying to figure out if he trusted me.
[00:25:58.003]Am I gonna be one of those (indistinct)
[00:25:59.893]that are gonna start to, you know, preach to them
[00:26:02.772]about the unsustainability ways of our lifestyle,
[00:26:06.166]or I a part of his tribe? Will he listened to me?
[00:26:09.370]We actually did continue the conversation later.
[00:26:11.961]And it was very interesting to watch where I simply said,
[00:26:14.506]"Look, I mean, you may think that the impact of this
[00:26:17.756]is gonna be light but if it's not,
[00:26:19.447]there's gonna be tremendous hardship.
[00:26:21.212]It just seems to me prudent
[00:26:22.732]that we should take actions in alternative mobility."
[00:26:26.019]And that actually got a good rise at him
[00:26:28.126]because he's seen what Tesla's can do.
[00:26:30.436]He loves the speed of his Hemi
[00:26:32.330]and a Tesla is infinitely faster.
[00:26:34.712]So he's excited about electric cars
[00:26:36.728]and this was a way to move the conversation.
[00:26:39.006]But I had to establish trust first and that's key.
[00:26:41.783]And I think many scientists, many academics
[00:26:43.531]don't know how to do that.
[00:26:44.882]They immediately start...
[00:26:45.875]When I hear academics say things like,
[00:26:47.363]"Well, the literature says."
[00:26:48.941]That's a way of distancing yourself from your audience.
[00:26:51.841]So you need to develop a rapport and develop trust.
[00:26:55.994]So there's the argument in the book.
[00:26:58.664]Now I wanna move to part two of my remarks
[00:27:01.198]and hopefully open up some veins of conversation
[00:27:03.731]for the rest of this conference.
[00:27:06.107]So what I wanna do is point out that
[00:27:08.416]the debate is shifting in some very interesting ways.
[00:27:11.535]There's some research from the Yale Program
[00:27:14.012]on Climate Change and Communication.
[00:27:15.877]There's some really nice work,
[00:27:17.166]some of the best I think, on pulling the American public.
[00:27:20.084]And you can see that graph I showed you before
[00:27:22.477]in a decline and belief in climate change
[00:27:24.624]and the partisan split stopped at 2010.
[00:27:27.670]Since 2010 a steady upward trend
[00:27:30.314]that people believe it's happening
[00:27:32.280]71% of the American public.
[00:27:34.375]56% believe it's human caused.
[00:27:36.288]And I find it quite interesting that 54%
[00:27:38.644]think there's a scientific consensus.
[00:27:40.714]So they think it's happening
[00:27:41.802]but less people believe the scientific consensus,
[00:27:43.800]which I find fascinating.
[00:27:46.237]2009, 2010 is a really important date
[00:27:48.618]because that was the period of the Climategate,
[00:27:51.535]if you're familiar with that.
[00:27:53.120]Some emails were hacked into
[00:27:54.390]at the University of East Anglia.
[00:27:56.238]People tried to make traction on that to say,
[00:27:58.510]"See, scientists are cooking the books."
[00:28:00.300]That was sort of the last gasp of really
[00:28:03.238]serious climate skepticism.
[00:28:04.603]And since then there's been a steady march
[00:28:07.671]towards acceptance of the issue.
[00:28:09.898]Here's that data.
[00:28:10.776]Similarly, I find this mind blowing.
[00:28:14.198]Environmental protection and climate change
[00:28:16.948]actually surpassed jobs as a top priority issue
[00:28:21.306]in this last presidential election.
[00:28:24.428]Let's face it.
[00:28:25.261]That's just simply amazing. It's unheard of.
[00:28:27.961]And that shows you the extent
[00:28:29.988]to which this issue has grown in importance.
[00:28:32.535]And I just find that totally fascinating.
[00:28:36.381]The Yale Center divides the American public.
[00:28:38.901]They have something called the Six Americans Study.
[00:28:41.656]They do this every year and they break...
[00:28:43.834]You know, the question do you believe in climate change
[00:28:46.113]is not a binary question.
[00:28:47.873]You can be any shades of gray from alarmed,
[00:28:50.843]I think this is a major issue,
[00:28:52.115]to dismissive, I think it's a joke,
[00:28:54.024]but shades of gray in the middle.
[00:28:56.091]And first of all, I think this is a nice template
[00:28:57.759]for you to think about
[00:28:58.632]as you're engaging people
[00:28:59.739]who don't believe in climate change.
[00:29:01.976]Are they more in the undecided middle?
[00:29:03.602]There's your arc. There's your target.
[00:29:05.367]If they're on the dismissive side, good luck.
[00:29:07.913]They're really not in a debate to change their minds.
[00:29:10.743]They're in a debate to win.
[00:29:12.546]And if you enjoy that kind of spiral then go for it,
[00:29:15.482]but the people in the middle of the more open-minded.
[00:29:18.188]And then if you look between 2013 and 2018
[00:29:21.571]those that are alarmed or concern have gone from 43%, 57%.
[00:29:26.240]Those who were doubtful or dismissive drop from 27 to 20%.
[00:29:30.363]The debate is shifting.
[00:29:32.062]So much so on these questions.
[00:29:35.643]I think it's happening up 11%.
[00:29:37.293]I'm worried about it at 16%,
[00:29:39.030]it will harm me personally and will harm Americans
[00:29:43.167]up 11 and 12%.
[00:29:44.585]This is critically important.
[00:29:46.297]People have been able to dismiss climate change
[00:29:48.663]for three reasons over time.
[00:29:50.643]It's gonna happen to somebody else,
[00:29:52.473]someplace else and in the future.
[00:29:55.488]And when we start to have things
[00:29:57.194]like the California wildfires
[00:29:59.151]and hurricanes hitting Houston
[00:30:01.299]and that cold snap that went all the way down to Texas,
[00:30:04.776]people are starting to say, "Oh, it's happening to me.
[00:30:08.678]It's happening to people I know.
[00:30:10.275]It's happening here
[00:30:11.713]and it's happening now."
[00:30:12.966]And that is starting to get people to shift
[00:30:14.535]in some very interesting ways.
[00:30:16.875]It's even changing the partisan divide.
[00:30:20.346]You can see some work by the Pew Research Center.
[00:30:23.018]Again, that critical inflection point 2009, 2010
[00:30:26.629]and the number of Republicans believing this is real
[00:30:30.024]on a steady upward trend.
[00:30:31.327]Bringing it up to 2020,
[00:30:33.688]69% of liberal and moderate Republicans
[00:30:37.176]believe global warming is happening.
[00:30:39.285]Half of moderate Republicans think is caused
[00:30:43.349]by human activities and 55% of worried about it.
[00:30:47.860]This is critically important.
[00:30:49.285]And I would say
[00:30:50.706]that there are certainly some districts
[00:30:53.804]and some states,
[00:30:55.239]where if a Republican came out now and say
[00:30:58.173]"Climate change is real."
[00:30:59.351]They would not suffer the wrath of their base.
[00:31:02.503]That's what they're afraid of.
[00:31:03.471]They're afraid of suffering the fate
[00:31:06.021]that Bob Inglis suffered in North Carolina.
[00:31:08.424]Bought all the bonafides of the conservative
[00:31:10.405]but then he said climate change was real,
[00:31:12.090]and he got voted out of office,
[00:31:13.542]and that legacy still lasts.
[00:31:16.147]But you can start to see
[00:31:17.866]some public and politicians
[00:31:19.711]starting to move on that institute
[00:31:21.540]trying to find a face saving way to shift their position.
[00:31:24.497]It's not easy.
[00:31:25.860]Some of them won't be able to do it.
[00:31:27.943]You know, James Inhofe,
[00:31:29.385]he's staked too much of his reputation
[00:31:31.837]on mocking this issue.
[00:31:33.088]It'd be very hard for him to move.
[00:31:35.454]But others are starting to come forward and say,
[00:31:37.417]to push their own agenda, "We should be investing in nuclear
[00:31:41.064]to address climate change.
[00:31:42.129]We need to invest in carbon capture
[00:31:43.535]and sequestration to address climate change."
[00:31:46.158]They're trying to find a way to move forward
[00:31:48.055]and I think that's critically important.
[00:31:50.413]What we need to do is give them a face saving way to do it
[00:31:53.635]because many of us would feel totally comfortable saying,
[00:31:56.452]"No, sorry. You've done too much to damage the Bay."
[00:31:59.737]Even Exxon Mobil, we could argue,
[00:32:01.405]they're trying to shift on the debate
[00:32:03.349]welcome them in, say, "Thank you.
[00:32:05.725]You're here. Let's start to move the debate."
[00:32:08.137]And I wanna move from there to this graph.
[00:32:10.446]This is a question that Yale asks every year.
[00:32:13.183]Do you talk about global warming
[00:32:14.763]or climate change with family or friends?
[00:32:16.435]And I always watch this.
[00:32:18.279]And you can see around 2014
[00:32:20.725]only about a quarter of the American public did that.
[00:32:23.611]And we're starting to inch our way up.
[00:32:25.772]This is very important.
[00:32:27.439]As Tip O'Neill famously said, "All politics is local."
[00:32:31.961]And if you speak up when someone at a coffee table
[00:32:35.843]or conversation says,
[00:32:36.895]"I think climate change is a hoax." And you engage them.
[00:32:40.750]They're more likely to change your opinion
[00:32:42.751]because now it's personal, it's one-on-one,
[00:32:45.013]rather than hearing it from someone in Washington
[00:32:47.441]or someone from some far away place.
[00:32:50.741]It has to be part of our local conversation.
[00:32:54.114]So this I think is tremendously important.
[00:32:56.098]And the numbers starting to come up, I want it to go higher
[00:32:59.551]but the more we talk about it, the more it becomes real.
[00:33:02.930]Think about the debate over cigarettes and cancer.
[00:33:05.605]For decades scientists said cigarettes cause cancer,
[00:33:07.303]for decades the American public rejected that idea.
[00:33:10.438]And then we've come to a social consensus
[00:33:12.566]that cigarettes cause cancer.
[00:33:13.807]How do you know that?
[00:33:15.203]Because you're not afraid to talk
[00:33:16.460]about this with people you don't know.
[00:33:18.654]'Cause you know that we all accept this is real.
[00:33:21.198]Climate change needs to reach the point
[00:33:22.707]of a social consensus
[00:33:23.790]where you're not afraid to talk about it in polite company.
[00:33:27.065]This trend tells us we're moving in that direction
[00:33:29.507]but we've got some ways to go.
[00:33:32.252]Here's where I'd like to maybe
[00:33:33.696]offer some fodder for the rest of this conference.
[00:33:37.312]When people do talk about it,
[00:33:38.830]when people think about it,
[00:33:40.300]what are they thinking?
[00:33:42.838]Obviously, number one,
[00:33:43.843]they see it as an environmental issue.
[00:33:45.805]80% of the American public see climate change
[00:33:48.486]as an environmental issue,
[00:33:50.086]and this is very recent data, December 2020.
[00:33:53.051]But work down that list.
[00:33:54.838]Is it a scientific issue?
[00:33:56.356]Is it a food issue? Agriculture?
[00:33:58.798]I think this is fascinating.
[00:33:59.986]Anytime I meet someone who makes their money off the land
[00:34:01.847]I'll ask them, "Do you see climate change?"
[00:34:03.859]I always get one of two answers either,
[00:34:05.164]"Yeah. I'm growing crops I never grew before.
[00:34:08.726]I'm seeing pest I never saw before.
[00:34:10.378]I'm irrigating fields I'd never irrigated before."
[00:34:13.613]Or they say, "I'm not ready to use
[00:34:16.367]that climate change liberal agenda word,
[00:34:19.324]but something weird is happening here
[00:34:21.088]that I have not seen before."
[00:34:23.467]I'm happy with both answers.
[00:34:25.197]It does suggest we're in discontinuity.
[00:34:27.178]We're in a new normal.
[00:34:28.407]Is there a severe weather issue?
[00:34:29.848]Is it an economic issue?
[00:34:31.580]I'm gonna focus on that one
[00:34:33.068]but you can go down this list.
[00:34:34.993]I'm disturbed and disappointed
[00:34:36.629]at the bottom only 10% see it as a religious issue,
[00:34:39.217]as a moral issue.
[00:34:40.357]Social justice issue above that.
[00:34:42.600]Fairness (indistinct).
[00:34:44.592]But even still, those two to my mind
[00:34:46.872]have to grow in prominence in the debate.
[00:34:50.265]And we can talk about the Pope,
[00:34:51.784]we could talk about environmental justice,
[00:34:55.219]working in with climate change, which it is.
[00:34:58.272]And think about the social justice components of it
[00:35:00.732]the poverty issues related to it.
[00:35:03.874]But here is the different facets
[00:35:06.320]of climate change as a cultural issue.
[00:35:09.081]And I leave it to you in your sessions going forward,
[00:35:12.527]which ones do you engage on?
[00:35:14.670]Which ones do you think are most potent?
[00:35:16.651]Which are most potent in certain communities?
[00:35:18.714]Which ones seem to grow in attention?
[00:35:21.021]These are all to my mind different facets
[00:35:23.796]of a culture shift that's in play
[00:35:26.518]right now on climate change.
[00:35:30.265]When we think about climate change
[00:35:32.016]and we think about it as a social movement,
[00:35:34.704]which is really central to a culture change
[00:35:37.607]I think something fascinating is happening.
[00:35:39.966]One of the problems with environmental issues in general,
[00:35:42.790]is that it has no clear constituency.
[00:35:45.625]When we talk about women's issues, we have women.
[00:35:48.119]When we talk about minority issues with minority,
[00:35:50.225]when we talk about labor issues, we have labor,
[00:35:52.218]but who is an environmentalist?
[00:35:53.754]They don't have a clear constituency.
[00:35:55.386]That has always been a problem.
[00:35:57.285]And on climate change the second problem is,
[00:35:59.051]I can't see it, I can't feel it.
[00:36:01.636]I can't see CO2.
[00:36:02.618]I can't feel global mean temperature go up.
[00:36:05.423]I can see weather events, but connecting those two
[00:36:07.869]start to get into some more fuzzy area.
[00:36:11.804]And then a constituency came forward called young people.
[00:36:16.032]Young people coming forward and saying,
[00:36:17.598]"We are an agreed party.
[00:36:19.381]We are disproportionately affected by climate change
[00:36:22.226]and you older people are doing this to us, younger people."
[00:36:26.382]And now you've got a social equity component in here.
[00:36:28.910]We could also bring in the racial justice component here.
[00:36:31.449]There are more minority communities
[00:36:33.231]particularly in urban centers.
[00:36:34.898]They're gonna be impacted disproportionately
[00:36:37.617]by rising temperatures
[00:36:38.990]and the heat waves that come with it
[00:36:40.704]and the pain and the suffering,
[00:36:42.138]and the death that comes from climate change.
[00:36:45.322]And so this, I find fascinating.
[00:36:47.121]We have a shift in the debate.
[00:36:48.507]And, you know, academics
[00:36:50.408]they don't believe anything unless you have data,
[00:36:52.171]so we had to have a paper in nature climate change,
[00:36:54.448]children can foster a climate change concern
[00:36:56.084]among the parents.
[00:36:57.087]I can sum up this paper very simply,
[00:36:58.753]parents love their children
[00:37:00.881]and they care about what they think about,
[00:37:02.367]and they care about their future.
[00:37:04.545]But I will also add, employers care about young people
[00:37:07.617]'cause they're future employees
[00:37:08.985]and they're looking at this movement and saying,
[00:37:10.733]"We've gotta move with it."
[00:37:11.821]So there's been a shift in the social debate.
[00:37:13.838]There's been a shift in the constituency
[00:37:16.491]around climate change.
[00:37:17.943]The messengers.
[00:37:19.545]I brought this up earlier
[00:37:21.098]and I think this is a fascinating one.
[00:37:22.580]I said, "You should avoid dystopian
[00:37:24.955]catastrophic scenarios on climate change."
[00:37:28.701]This is an open question.
[00:37:31.196]And in 2017, New York Magazine had this article,
[00:37:33.834]The Uninhabitable Earth.
[00:37:35.323]Here's the opening line from the article.
[00:37:37.643]"It is, I promise, worse than you think.
[00:37:39.807]If your anxiety about global warming
[00:37:41.360]is dominated by fears of sea level rise,
[00:37:42.989]you are barely scratching the surface
[00:37:44.774]of what terrors are possible."
[00:37:46.737]And they went through and just did a litany
[00:37:48.311]of the worst case scenario on climate change.
[00:37:51.017]This was the most read article
[00:37:52.679]in the history of a magazine.
[00:37:54.611]And it precipitated a book contract
[00:37:55.880]and the author has a book called The Uninhabitable Earth.
[00:38:00.493]Read the article, but then read the letters to the editor
[00:38:04.415]and subsequent issue, and it's a fascinating debate.
[00:38:07.169]Some people saying you shouldn't do this.
[00:38:09.246]You shouldn't scare people
[00:38:10.517]by giving them the worst case scenario.
[00:38:12.651]And other holding the ground saying, "No,
[00:38:14.645]you really have to bound the conversation
[00:38:17.253]and say these are the worst things that can happen."
[00:38:19.290]The Gulf stream can stop and that would be catastrophic.
[00:38:22.289]This can happen.
[00:38:23.747]It's an open debate.
[00:38:25.063]I don't have a clearance for it now.
[00:38:26.664]Since 2015 the conversation has shifted.
[00:38:29.204]And in part, because we're starting to see
[00:38:31.299]some of the effects of climate change.
[00:38:33.181]Maybe you can push the boundary a little further
[00:38:35.064]and say, "You think that's bad, get ready for this."
[00:38:38.395]And off we go.
[00:38:39.233]So I put this in here that the conversation
[00:38:41.598]is shifting, particularly on that issue.
[00:38:45.120]Also, why are people changing their position
[00:38:47.034]on climate change?
[00:38:48.105]And number one, the recent extreme weather events.
[00:38:51.176]Whether it's the hurricanes or the wildfires,
[00:38:53.368]whether it's the droughts or the tornadoes, the ice storms,
[00:38:57.751]people are connecting that to climate change.
[00:39:00.117]And importantly and I find this fascinating,
[00:39:02.397]another constituent has enter the debate,
[00:39:04.682]weather people, weather forecasters.
[00:39:06.849]We in America trust our weather forecasters. We do.
[00:39:10.726]And many of them are now saying,
[00:39:12.374]"Okay, why did this hurricane happen?
[00:39:14.797]Is because the sea is getting warmer,
[00:39:16.507]caused by climate change,
[00:39:17.691]that increases the severity of the storm
[00:39:19.587]and we're seeing more frequency of storms."
[00:39:21.732]And they are a broker, a climate broker.
[00:39:24.251]That are bringing the issue to the floor
[00:39:26.007]and starting to change the conversation.
[00:39:28.758]Even so, that if you're following
[00:39:32.744]North Carolina in 2012 passed a law
[00:39:35.385]that you can't use sea level rise
[00:39:37.550]in predicting impact on coastal communities.
[00:39:40.370]That would have tremendous impact on insurance,
[00:39:43.059]on property values.
[00:39:44.990]And so they passed that law.
[00:39:46.588]Fast forward 2021,
[00:39:48.932]coastal communities in North Carolina
[00:39:51.225]are now having very serious conversations
[00:39:53.234]about how much you wanna pay for seawalls to
[00:39:56.210]protect those houses right along the beach there.
[00:39:59.114]And if you have any experience
[00:40:00.048]with coastal communities...
[00:40:02.009]I used to live on Nantucket
[00:40:03.546]and I've seen houses falling into the ocean
[00:40:05.371]because the sand is soft, it moves.
[00:40:08.741]And so here is the debate in climate change
[00:40:12.944]shifting based on real world experience
[00:40:16.829]I'd like to focus on the economic issue.
[00:40:19.348]I'm in a business school.
[00:40:20.261]And I think this is tremendously important
[00:40:22.109]for getting people to recognize the issue of climate change.
[00:40:24.287]To my mind, to make people believe in climate change,
[00:40:26.874]to make it salient,
[00:40:27.707]the best way to do this put a dollar sign on it,
[00:40:30.191]and the best way to do that is make an economic issue.
[00:40:32.550]And if you look at what Joe Biden is doing on climate change
[00:40:35.662]he is to a large extent, hanging it on economics
[00:40:39.153]the market, jobs, boosting the economy.
[00:40:43.179]And I think that's a tremendously potent frame
[00:40:45.569]for driving change and recognizing that change is underway.
[00:40:49.709]So these are gonna be my final remarks of tracking this,
[00:40:52.847]and then I'll bring it to a close.
[00:40:55.901]Any number of the industries
[00:40:57.221]I have on this sheet right here
[00:40:58.818]are impacted by climate change now
[00:41:01.638]and are dealing with it now.
[00:41:03.765]If you make your money from the land
[00:41:05.039]in agriculture, fisheries, livestock, beverages, tourism
[00:41:09.854]you're impacted by climate change.
[00:41:11.411]You're in the construction industry.
[00:41:13.241]I always marvel when I go to Phoenix
[00:41:14.328]and the dead of summer
[00:41:15.929]and watch how they try and build a building
[00:41:18.077]when you've got temperatures over a 100 degrees.
[00:41:20.021]Productivity slows down, concrete cures more quickly,
[00:41:23.540]it becomes very hard.
[00:41:26.142]Two industries I wanna focus on particular,
[00:41:28.817]insurance and finance.
[00:41:30.380]To my mind they're the canaries in the coal mine,
[00:41:32.975]and they are driving change.
[00:41:34.343]The first is insurance.
[00:41:36.074]Insurance is the most vulnerable to climate change.
[00:41:38.480]They're most attentive to it.
[00:41:40.398]On the bottom left.
[00:41:41.243]I showed this graph when I talked to many climate skeptics
[00:41:43.267]showing the increase in the frequency of natural disasters.
[00:41:47.147]And I watched their face when I say,
[00:41:48.617]"This came from (indistinct) a reinsurance company."
[00:41:51.130]And if you're not familiar
[00:41:51.981]with how the insurance sector works
[00:41:53.049]you have insurance companies,
[00:41:54.380]you have re-insurance companies
[00:41:55.649]that insure insurance companies.
[00:41:57.480]These are big firms, usually in Switzerland, lots of assets,
[00:42:01.215]long-term time horizons, broad risk portfolio.
[00:42:04.776]This comes from an insurance company.
[00:42:07.191]Now that one a nice, steady, upward trend
[00:42:10.738]insurance companies now to adjust their premiums for that.
[00:42:14.011]But then look at the graph to the right of it, it's spiky.
[00:42:17.002]That makes insurance companies very uncomfortable
[00:42:19.051]'cause they don't know how to figure out
[00:42:20.655]how to price their instruments
[00:42:21.951]and what kind of coverage to provide.
[00:42:23.568]That uncertainty causes a tremendous concern.
[00:42:26.016]And then look to the right.
[00:42:27.259]Global insured losses from wildfires 2010 to 2018.
[00:42:30.930]Look at that spike.
[00:42:32.459]Keep in mind that doesn't include the California wildfires.
[00:42:36.368]That number is gonna go through the roof
[00:42:38.331]and it happened in one year,
[00:42:39.829]and that's critically important.
[00:42:40.919]Warren Buffett famously said a couple of years ago,
[00:42:43.599]he's not terribly worried about
[00:42:44.967]his insurance companies dealing with climate change
[00:42:46.983]'cause they can rewrite their premiums on an annual basis.
[00:42:50.132]And now people are coming forward and say,
[00:42:52.447]"You can have an event with tremendous impact
[00:42:55.255]in a shorter timeframe, and you can lose your book."
[00:42:59.165]In the upper left, in the society of actuaries
[00:43:02.133]who surveys insurance underwriters every year.
[00:43:05.089]Last year climate change popped to the top of list
[00:43:08.326]of emerging risks the first time ever.
[00:43:11.083]Insurance companies are very worried about this.
[00:43:14.178]Then the finance sector.
[00:43:16.048]ESG investing, fascinating.
[00:43:18.943]That's environmental, social and governance
[00:43:21.149]has been growing rapidly,
[00:43:22.858]and then grew even more rapidly during COVID.
[00:43:25.935]A lot of investors are looking
[00:43:27.090]for could corporate actors
[00:43:28.512]moving their money in that direction.
[00:43:30.288]And a lot of people are divesting from fossil fuels.
[00:43:33.082]So you can see the number down on the bottom.
[00:43:35.170]Over in the bottom left from why to why not,
[00:43:37.709]sustainable investing is the new normal.
[00:43:40.714]Again, this is not from an environmental group.
[00:43:42.586]This is from McKinsey consultant.
[00:43:44.223]This is from a management consulting firm.
[00:43:46.618]We are here.
[00:43:47.913]A lot of entities are divesting from fossil fuels.
[00:43:50.832]The irony of ironies.
[00:43:53.166]Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
[00:43:55.303]This is money from John D. Rockefeller.
[00:43:57.732]This is from standard oil.
[00:43:58.975]This is all oil money.
[00:44:00.324]And then look at their statements on this.
[00:44:02.772]They very adamant that this is immoral
[00:44:05.074]to keep investing in fossil fuels red underneath it.
[00:44:09.013]Norway is a sovereign wealth fund.
[00:44:10.939]Where did they get their money? North Sea oil.
[00:44:13.532]And they're moving out of oil and gas.
[00:44:15.555]Insurance companies.
[00:44:16.711]Coal is the first, Arctic drilling is the second
[00:44:20.023]and the dominoes are falling.
[00:44:23.493]The economic impacts will continue.
[00:44:26.033]This is a study by the Brookings Institution
[00:44:28.591]looking at where the impacts will be.
[00:44:31.107]Red is obviously the strongest impact
[00:44:33.579]between 2080 and 2099 on the economy.
[00:44:36.929]Oddly enough, this may surprise you.
[00:44:39.066]Blue is where the economy could actually be improved
[00:44:42.761]because of climate change,
[00:44:44.201]but you can see the disproportionate impacts
[00:44:46.179]of climate change on the economy.
[00:44:48.574]Watch that closely if you are in the insurance sector
[00:44:51.882]or you're making money off the land,
[00:44:54.384]or you're investing in businesses in that area.
[00:44:57.286]And then bringing the political back in
[00:44:58.961]what they did was they graft those
[00:45:01.530]states that were gonna be most hit by climate change.
[00:45:04.433]The length of line to the right boosted by climate change,
[00:45:07.260]the length of the line to the left,
[00:45:09.185]and then they coded it on whether they voted for Clinton...
[00:45:12.546]Yeah, Clinton,
[00:45:14.254]or Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
[00:45:17.319]You can see it's Republican states
[00:45:19.695]that getting hit hardest.
[00:45:21.692]So there is the economic issue.
[00:45:24.086]Now let's bring it into the domain of the cultural
[00:45:26.732]because I think economic and cultural go hand in hand.
[00:45:29.434]There's something very interesting going on
[00:45:30.946]that I've been watching.
[00:45:32.238]When I first started focusing on this issue back in the,
[00:45:35.470]you know, the early 2000s, late 1990s
[00:45:38.807]the conversation was really around carbon reduction.
[00:45:42.025]How are companies reducing their carbon?
[00:45:44.154]And it was all, you know,
[00:45:45.469]we're gonna reduce carbon by 10% by date X or 20% by date X.
[00:45:49.656]And that was the conversation.
[00:45:52.286]And that is, to my mind, fairly easy
[00:45:54.511]because the continuation
[00:45:55.677]of the way they've been thinking all along.
[00:45:58.128]It's just about equal efficiency,
[00:45:59.874]just tightening the belt a little bit, nothing changes.
[00:46:03.440]And then the conversation has shifted
[00:46:05.040]to carbon neutral.
[00:46:06.264]This is a totally different question.
[00:46:08.136]I find it quite fascinating.
[00:46:09.807]I would have thought this would remain a conversation
[00:46:12.546]a bunch of academics in seminar rooms
[00:46:15.826]but it has hit the business community,
[00:46:17.653]and it has hit in global politics.
[00:46:19.660]So WeWork, Toyota, Ariel and Marks & Spencer
[00:46:22.493]says that the first retail to go carbon neutral.
[00:46:24.979]Schneider Electric, and there are a lot more.
[00:46:27.704]This is important because
[00:46:28.968]if you don't ask the right question
[00:46:30.571]you won't get the right answers.
[00:46:32.184]We have to go carbon neutral.
[00:46:33.899]And that requires a different way
[00:46:35.435]of thinking about the systems of which you operate.
[00:46:38.234]It's not just screwing an led light bulb.
[00:46:40.546]It's actually looking at our products,
[00:46:42.074]looking at our supply chains,
[00:46:43.627]looking at our raw materials
[00:46:45.355]and really rethinking in a very clever way
[00:46:48.724]how do we do this.
[00:46:50.121]For an auto company it's about changing a drive train
[00:46:52.995]or even thinking about autonomous mobility.
[00:46:55.158]And then if you want to put it on the level of a country,
[00:46:57.881]New Zealand, Iceland, Costa Rica,
[00:46:59.650]while now also going carbon neutral.
[00:47:01.623]How are they gonna do that?
[00:47:03.062]You can't do it by simply screwing in an led light bulb.
[00:47:06.104]You really have to rethink systems.
[00:47:07.952]This is a culture change.
[00:47:09.603]And then carbon negative.
[00:47:12.834]Companies are starting to talk about carbon negative.
[00:47:15.922]Now Microsoft and Ikea are two of them.
[00:47:18.214]Microsoft says they're gonna undo
[00:47:20.255]all the carbon emissions they put into the atmosphere
[00:47:22.841]since they began.
[00:47:24.462]You think that's easy, think again.
[00:47:27.001]It really requires a different form of systemic change,
[00:47:29.927]of systemic thinking.
[00:47:31.882]Our culture is shifting and it has driven...
[00:47:35.202]You know, this is one aspect of it within our economy,
[00:47:37.752]electric cars.
[00:47:39.380]If you talk to anyone in the auto sector now
[00:47:42.396]the answer is simple, the future is electric.
[00:47:45.228]Period, end of sentence. We're there.
[00:47:48.290]General Motors just announced
[00:47:49.830]that even to the point of changing their logo,
[00:47:51.693]they're going electric.
[00:47:52.676]Volvo is going electric, Audi's going...
[00:47:54.350]Everyone's going electric.
[00:47:55.806]And some countries are.
[00:47:56.859]You maybe surprise that Norway is leading the way.
[00:47:59.590]Upwards of 60% of sales in March 2019 were electric.
[00:48:03.352]And they're really pushing towards an electric fleet,
[00:48:06.202]which means they need the electric infrastructure.
[00:48:08.373]Needs you to think differently about it.
[00:48:10.490]And once you start to go electric
[00:48:12.228]the car becomes something different.
[00:48:13.962]You can see on the right there,
[00:48:15.149]there's a picture of a Nissan Leaf.
[00:48:16.722]If you buy one in Japan, you can actually buy a transformer.
[00:48:20.447]And when you have a power failure,
[00:48:22.163]you plug your house into the car,
[00:48:23.409]you run your house off the battery pack.
[00:48:25.719]You start to think differently about the car.
[00:48:28.220]We can move over to renewables
[00:48:29.760]and renewables are growing rapidly.
[00:48:31.793]How we think about the grid is fundamentally changing.
[00:48:35.169]How we think about energy, fundamentally changing.
[00:48:37.581]And then to really push your boundaries on the bottom.
[00:48:41.335]You know, I was born in 1961 with 3 billion people on earth.
[00:48:45.189]Today, there is 7.5
[00:48:46.680]and by 2050 there'll be 10 billion people.
[00:48:49.062]Let that sink in for a second.
[00:48:51.073]It took what, 15,000 years to go from zero to 3 billion.
[00:48:54.850]And in the course of my short lifetime
[00:48:56.230]we've more than doubled that.
[00:48:58.189]Can we all have a T-bone steak for dinner every night?
[00:49:00.989]No, I'm sorry. You can't.
[00:49:02.672]And can the climate handle that?
[00:49:04.260]No, I'm sorry. It can't.
[00:49:06.213]We need all alternative forms of protein.
[00:49:09.164]We've got (indistinct) there, we've got tofu.
[00:49:11.572]Entering the market is vegetable-based proteins
[00:49:14.334]and impossible burger was the hottest IPO in 2019.
[00:49:18.782]The market is moving that direction.
[00:49:20.659]And then right behind it, if you're ready for this
[00:49:22.996]cricket farms, insect based protein.
[00:49:25.854]You can buy crickets, you know,
[00:49:28.334]roasted crickets and eat them.
[00:49:30.453]I'm not ready for that.
[00:49:31.827]More like you're going to find protein powder
[00:49:34.093]coming from this source.
[00:49:35.603]This is a form of a culture change.
[00:49:38.204]Think about it.
[00:49:39.684]1982, sushi entered the American market.
[00:49:42.350]Most Americans thought that was disgusting, eating raw fish
[00:49:45.222]and now it's a delicacy.
[00:49:46.854]And how far can we go on this?
[00:49:48.852]Culture is shifting in some very interesting ways.
[00:49:51.806]You can even look at it in the market.
[00:49:53.446]I find this jaw dropping.
[00:49:55.214]The market cap of Tesla, $640 billion.
[00:49:58.803]And this data it when all the way up to 800
[00:50:02.126]is coming back around 500, it's fluctuating.
[00:50:05.174]But look at the order of magnitudes
[00:50:06.886]comparing that to General Motors and Ford.
[00:50:09.074]This is just jaw-dropping.
[00:50:10.526]The Tesla has 10 times the market cap
[00:50:13.142]of General Motors and Ford.
[00:50:15.180]And then look at the line.
[00:50:16.545]Tesla, steady upward trend,
[00:50:18.296]General Motors, Ford, really having a struggle
[00:50:21.398]is bouncing around.
[00:50:22.699]We can look at well at the energy sector.
[00:50:25.490]Look at the, you know, NextEra Energy, Enel,
[00:50:28.559]and I never pronounce this right Iberdrola,
[00:50:31.062]these are companies heavily invested renewables.
[00:50:33.459]And then down we have the bottom
[00:50:35.825]the typical energy stocks and Exxon, Shell BP.
[00:50:39.417]These companies are rivaling those two
[00:50:41.377]and if those trends continue will surpass them.
[00:50:45.329]Where should you be investing?
[00:50:47.238]This graph makes it very simple to market things,
[00:50:49.894]renewables are the future.
[00:50:51.714]Exxon's been making a slight comeback recently
[00:50:54.847]but most analysts look at that as a short term play,
[00:50:57.757]and the long-term play is still on the top.
[00:51:00.834]The market is shifting,
[00:51:02.419]corporations and their role within the market are shifting.
[00:51:05.917]Even to the point where some people are asking
[00:51:08.238]some very interesting questions about
[00:51:09.883]whether the market needs to shift.
[00:51:12.758]So you'll get Darren Walker from the Ford Foundation saying,
[00:51:14.883]"Climate change and income inequality
[00:51:17.298]threaten our democratic values,
[00:51:18.794]discourse and institutions."
[00:51:20.744]Joseph Stiglitz the Nobel Laureate in economics saying,
[00:51:23.304]"Capitalism is need from being saved from itself."
[00:51:26.708]Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever says,
[00:51:28.477]"Capitalism is damaged ideology
[00:51:30.054]that needs to be reinvented for the 21st century."
[00:51:33.395]And I could go on.
[00:51:35.037]People are questioning capitalism.
[00:51:37.124]Young people are becoming disenchanted with capitalism.
[00:51:40.532]Capitalism needs to adjust.
[00:51:42.112]The market needs to adjust.
[00:51:44.032]Even right now, here in COVID,
[00:51:45.967]before COVID started a statistic came up
[00:51:47.911]from the Federal Reserve.
[00:51:49.284]40% of Americans could not pull together $400 in emergency.
[00:51:52.928]They're in that emergency right now.
[00:51:54.398]We have record unemployment,
[00:51:55.639]people in serious financial distress
[00:51:57.973]and the stock market is booming.
[00:51:59.718]And Jeff Bezos is poised
[00:52:01.501]to become the world's first trillionaire.
[00:52:03.988]Is something amiss? Yes.
[00:52:05.388]Is the market gonna change? Let's see.
[00:52:08.917]We even have serious conversation.
[00:52:11.007]Black Rock, the largest private equity firm in the world
[00:52:15.186]telling the CEOs they may need
[00:52:17.546]to make a positive contribution to society.
[00:52:20.037]The Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum
[00:52:22.751]all coming forward and saying,
[00:52:24.111]"The purpose of the corporation
[00:52:25.688]is not just to make money for a shareholder.
[00:52:28.491]It has a responsibility to society."
[00:52:30.646]And that debate has been engaged.
[00:52:32.637]How do you put this into practice?
[00:52:34.633]I'll tell you the students I talked to
[00:52:36.538]in business school are on this.
[00:52:38.251]They really wanna start to think differently
[00:52:40.067]about the corporation,
[00:52:41.401]is not just a sociopathic entity focused only on itself
[00:52:45.867]to the exclusion of everyone around them.
[00:52:48.021]That debate is engaged.
[00:52:49.553]Let's keep it going.
[00:52:53.077]If you saw just two weeks ago,
[00:52:55.140]the American Petroleum Institute
[00:52:57.336]is getting ready to make a statement
[00:52:59.323]endorsing a carbon price to meet the Paris accord.
[00:53:02.224]We are in a very interesting transition point.
[00:53:05.719]It's an economic shift,
[00:53:07.302]it's a cultural shift,
[00:53:08.930]and I find this very interesting.
[00:53:11.741]So that is just some material to get you,
[00:53:14.132]you know, maybe precipitate some conversations
[00:53:16.364]in the sessions to come,
[00:53:17.554]or in the Q&A that's gonna follow that.
[00:53:19.800]I wanna leave you with one last provocation
[00:53:21.614]before I wrap up.
[00:53:23.109]A closing thought I have here.
[00:53:25.191]What I wanna do is show you a picture of my grandparents.
[00:53:28.655]And in particular, my grandmother is sitting there.
[00:53:30.751]I love this picture.
[00:53:31.834]She was born in 1899 and she died in 1995.
[00:53:36.838]Think about it, when she died, I was thinking about it,
[00:53:39.832]what kind of change did she see in her lifetime?
[00:53:42.543]She saw the advent of indoor plumbing.
[00:53:44.701]She grew up in a house with an outhouse.
[00:53:46.606]She saw the advent of indoor electrification.
[00:53:48.931]She saw the first car.
[00:53:50.293]She saw the first flight.
[00:53:51.690]She saw a man land on the moon.
[00:53:53.038]She saw the first computer.
[00:53:54.310]She saw all that and more.
[00:53:56.663]She saw economic change,
[00:53:57.845]she saw cultural change
[00:54:00.077]on a scale that if I had told her when she was 20
[00:54:04.074]this is the world you would die in,
[00:54:05.409]she would've looked at me dead in the eye and said,
[00:54:06.968]"You're crazy. That's never gonna happen."
[00:54:09.374]If I could show my students today
[00:54:11.373]the world they would die in, they would say the same thing.
[00:54:15.436]"That's crazy. That's never gonna happen."
[00:54:18.350]Try and imagine what that world would be.
[00:54:21.045]That is the interesting question
[00:54:22.488]'cause the world is gonna be fundamentally different.
[00:54:24.815]Will everyone have a car? I think not.
[00:54:27.650]If they don't have a car, how many roads do we have?
[00:54:30.267]How many parking garages do we have?
[00:54:32.035]Did that garage behind your house
[00:54:32.993]become an in-law apartment?
[00:54:34.602]Everything changes.
[00:54:35.556]What do cities look like
[00:54:36.554]if they're designed around people and not around cars?
[00:54:39.679]Everything starts to shift,
[00:54:41.169]it's all part of our culture.
[00:54:43.130]And then the question I pose to my students
[00:54:45.379]and I pose to you in this conference,
[00:54:47.486]now that you've pictured that world,
[00:54:49.227]what role do you wanna have
[00:54:51.136]in making it the world you want it to be?
[00:54:54.117]There's the ultimate question
[00:54:55.247]around culture change and climate change.
[00:54:57.426]I hope that precipitates some thinking
[00:54:58.946]for the rest of this conference.
[00:55:00.177]I thank the organizers for inviting me
[00:55:02.897]and I wish you a good conference.
[00:55:05.597]Thank you very much.
[00:55:07.962](upbeat music)

Keynote: Andrew Hoffman

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Keynote: Andrew Hoffman

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