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TED Talks Daily Book Club: Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet | Kate Marvel
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- [00:00]
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- [01:02]
Elise Hu
The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the Wrong People Ever get an ad that makes you wonder if the Internet really knows you? For weeks I was served ads for high performance surfboards, except I can't surf, even though I have tried many times. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com TedTalks that's LinkedIn.com Ted Talks. Terms and conditions apply. Happy Sunday. Today we're bringing you a new installment of our Book Club series where we check out new books from TED speakers that will spark your curiosity all year long. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and former cosmologist who spends her days predicting different outcomes of climate change using weather models. But she's also a human being and like all of us, has deep feelings about our changing planet. We sat down to discuss her new book, Human nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, and it's an extremely unique take on climate change because it's not just telling us the science or history or what we need to do to fix things. Rather, it's an exploration of nine different emotions, which she uses as a lens for exploring this moment. We talked about her immense sense of wonder and awe about the world, why she chose to write this book. Book, and how she's learning to embrace the grief she feels towards what we're losing and why. For her, it's better to know both the bad and good about our future rather than to not know at all. Kate, welcome to TED Talks Daily.
- [03:08]
Kate Marvel
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:12]
Elise Hu
So, today we're here to talk about your book, Human Nature, 9 Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, which came out in June of this year. For those who haven't read the book yet, can you give us a brief introduction to it, why this book and why now?
- [03:28]
Kate Marvel
Sure. You can think of it essentially as a biography of the planet in nine different emotions. And the genesis of this idea was the fact that I was having feelings and I was feeling really guilty about it because I'm a scientist and we are supposed to be neutral and we're supposed to be objective and we're supposed to pretend like we don't have. Have any feelings or preferences. But I study the Earth and everything and everybody that I care about is here, so of course I have feelings about that. And then I kind of realized that, oh, as scientists, we don't make ourselves more credible when we pretend we don't feel anything. That makes us liars. And I didn't want to be a liar. I wanted to find a new way to talk about climate change that actually resonated with people and that talked about, yes, the science, but also about how that makes us feel.
- [04:25]
Elise Hu
Yeah, yeah. I'm hearing so many parallels from your field to mine of journalism, where, you know, we are expected to be objective and sort of implacid and not have feelings. But ultimately, journalism is a method in the same way that science is a method and it can lead to various feelings about things because, you know, we are part of various communities.
- [04:44]
Kate Marvel
Absolutely. I feel like science and journalism, right, like we're trying to do the same things. We're trying to figure out what's true and we're trying to tell people about it. But both of us are human beings, right. And we can't sort of leave our humanity at the door. And when we pretend we're not humans, then we're not telling the truth. We're not giving the full picture.
- [05:05]
Elise Hu
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. So here you chose to frame the story through nine different feelings that one could have about climate change. They are wonder, anger, guilt, fear, grief, surprise, pride, hope, and love. What inspired you to break out this book this way?
- [05:27]
Kate Marvel
I was frustrated at the tone of most climate change media and communications because it seemed like it was kind of telling you to pick one feeling. And that feeling should be abject terror, or it should be rage, or it should be, you know, staggering guilt or overwhelming grief. And all of those things are valid, and all of those things are rooted in the reality of the situation. But I don't think that there is any one way to feel about climate change, because climate change is affecting literally everything that we know. And so how could you possibly have a single feeling about that? And something that I wanted to do was to really write about the incredible range of feelings that we have when we look at our planet and we see it change, changing.
- [06:26]
Elise Hu
You talk about this overly pessimistic coverage or way of talking about climate change, that can really lead to a kind of learned helplessness among audience members or just tuning out, right? Like, you read enough stories about fossil fuel companies or the destruction of the planet, and it can make me feel like, what can I individually do about this? And then turn away, right? Turn away from the coverage itself. So what is the role, do you think, of communications right now in the fight against climate change?
- [06:59]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, that's a good question. Part of me wants to defer to your expertise as a journalist, as somebody who thinks about how we talk about things in ways that resonate with people. I do know that how we scientists tend to talk about climate change hasn't been working, or it's worked as far as it can work, because we, and I definitely include myself in this, have a temptation to say one more chart or one more equation or one more table, and then finally people will believe us and they will understand the gravity of the situation and they'll be motivated to act. But that's not what moves people. That's not what causes people to pay attention. We're human beings. We are story machines. We. We really resonate with the stories that we tell each other. And the reason that those stories are important and are resonant and is that they are emotional. I do want to be really clear that I don't know anything about emotions other than having them. This is not a book about how to manage your climate anxiety. This is not a book about how to think about your own feelings or what to do about them. This is a book about the enormity of Climate change and the amazingness of this planet and all of the different things that we can feel about it.
- [08:29]
Elise Hu
You also write that you're not going to try and make a case to climate deniers. There's not many climate deniers out there anymore, by percentage, I suppose, because people who trust the science and believe in climate change are already convinced. So as a scientist, who is the book for?
- [08:47]
Kate Marvel
I want the book to be for a wide range of people. I would like my scientist colleagues to read it and think, yeah, she got the facts right. But I also want people who don't think of themselves as scientists to read this book. People who might want to read a book of nature writing, people who might prefer to read a novel instead. I want them to read this and realize that, oh, climate change, it's informed by the science, but it's not a scientific issue. I get really annoyed when you read these headlines that are like, ice sheets melting and scientists are really worried, or global temperature is rising and scientists are concerned. Because I'm like, what planet do the rest of you live on? This is not just, just a scientific problem. And the reason it matters is it affects us. And that's all of us. And so I want people who don't think of themselves as science people or who don't think of themselves as climate people to read this book and get a picture of what the science says, but also what the history says, what stories we can tell about climate change.
- [09:58]
Elise Hu
In laying out this book, you braid elements of history, of science, even a little Greek mythology. Towards the beginning of the book, you bring up Cassandra, the Trojan priestess who had the gift of prophecy. Why start there?
- [10:12]
Kate Marvel
I started there because I think a lot about stories and I think a lot about themes that resonate in stories. And one story that comes up over and over and over again is Cassandra, because she had the gift of prophecy, but it was a curse because she was cursed to always be right and nobody would ever believe her. And so the, the parallels are, are pretty striking with modern day climate science. But I wanted to kind of invert that myth, to turn it on its head and think, actually that is tragic and it is doomed. But oh my gosh, how amazing must it have been to be the only one who knows the truth? And I think that there is something wonderful and beaut and amazing about the fact that we understand anything about this planet at all. And that's my job. That's the job of a scientist. It's to learn something new every day.
- [11:14]
Elise Hu
Yeah. In the book you frame humans in a Sense of being our own gods, in that we have so much power these days to shape the future, to shape our worlds. Can you talk about this idea and how you thought about it in the writing process?
- [11:33]
Kate Marvel
Yeah. So if you'll forgive me being a little pedantic for a second, you know, scientists don't make predictions about the future. We make projections. And the reason that that matters is that a projection is conditional. We say if this happens, then this might be the consequences of that. And the reason that's important is that climate models, like the ones that I work on, they're made out of physics and they're made out of cod. They run on stories. That's the fuel for them. So if you take a story about the future, what we do as human beings, and we translate that into emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols of carbon dioxide and methane and other pollutants, and we feed that story to a climate model. That climate model is very literally a world building machine. It will show you the world that will result from that. And there's a lot of uncertainty about climate change. There's no uncertainty about what's causing it. There's no uncertainty about it being a bad thing overall. But there is uncertainty about exactly how hot it will get, exactly what clouds are going to do, exactly what plants are going to do. But the biggest source of uncertainty when we look at the future is that story is what human beings are going to do. And that is one of the most robust scientists scientific findings, is that really the future is still in our hands. Human beings have the ability to determine how bad climate change is going to be.
- [13:13]
Elise Hu
A really hopeful example of that was just within the last 30 years or so with the hole in the ozone layer. When I was growing up, well, when I was a child, a small child, I was born in the 80s. I remember the hole in the ozone layer being this big concern, but there was news, I think just within the last couple of weeks that that hole has kind of repaired because of actions taken 30 some odd years ago.
- [13:36]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, it's definitely on the road to recovery. You know, it's an incomplete story. It's not the whole picture. But the short answer to what happened to the ozone hole is we fixed it. I remember when I was a kid, I'm also an 80s baby. We heard a lot about the ozone hole, but we also heard a lot about acid rain. Yes, that's right. And you know, we fixed that too. That was a consequence of the Clean Air Act. I am a massive fan of the Clean Air act. Which was passed in 1970 by, of all people, Richard Nixon. Updated in the 90s. And the thing about the Clean Air act is it made the air a lot cleaner and it saved millions of lives. Is it perfect? No. Is it an exact mirror for what we need to do about climate change? No. But I think it's a good thing. And I think it's appropriate to point it out and to acknowledge that human beings can do really bad things, but we can also do really good things.
- [14:43]
Elise Hu
Stick around. We'll be right back after a short.
- [14:45]
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- [14:48]
Kate Marvel
Dreaming of getting the all new.
- [14:50]
Elise Hu
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- [15:03]
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- [16:12]
Elise Hu
You do write that you think that climate change won't be the end of humanity, but you make the point that there is a wide gap between merely surviving and then thriving. This is kind of where projections come in, right? Like when scientists make projections, it's like this is a worst case scenario, this is a better scenario. This is is the ideal scenario if there's interventions. So what did you mean about this gap between surviving and thriving?
- [16:39]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of the discourse about climate change is, oh, climate change is an existential threat for humanity. It's going to make us go extinct. And then the response is, oh no, it won't make us go extinct. And I Think that's probably true. I think climate change probably will not lead to the extinction of all human beings on Earth. But honestly, like, I want something better than not, not extinct, because I have higher standards than that, you know, And I think it's important to consider climate action not just as something we need to do to prevent the worst effects, but also as something that we can do that will give us benefits. Right now, a lot of the things that are emitting greenhouse gases, burning coal and gas and oil, are also the things that are causing air pollution, making the air dirty. And when we knock it off, that gives us cleaner air immediately. We know there are economic benefits. We know that there are national security benefits. And I think it's important to emphasize that we're not necessarily just looking at the difference between complete apocalypse and really sucks. You know, we're looking at a really wide variety of different futures. And, and it helps to allow ourselves to think of, well, what might we actually want?
- [18:11]
Elise Hu
Yeah, yeah. In a lot of cases, the present isn't even that desirable. One takeaway from the book is that even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases on this planet tomorrow, the world isn't done feeling the effects of climate change or the damage that we've done so far. So because of that, there are some things that are, are too late to save or prevent, like these catastrophic weather events that we've been seeing. And now we're kind of at the point of minimizing the damage or trying to minimize the damage. Do you fear that that sort of messaging could be demotivating sort of this idea that, hey, the cow's already out of the barn on a lot of fronts?
- [18:52]
Kate Marvel
I mean, there's a difference between the cow being out of the barn and I don't know what's the worst case cow scenario we can think of, you know, the cow getting bitten by a radioactive zomb be. And, you know, so we are, we are looking at, you know, again, like a very, very wide spectrum of possible futures. It's true that no climate change, that's not an option anymore. The world is already, as I speak, about 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution. We're poised to blow past that 1.5 degree Celsius target set by the Paris Agreement, and there's no going back from that. We know that if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, the temperature would stabilize, so we wouldn't see any more warming. But the Earth is not done adjusting to the warming that's already occurred. The ocean takes a really, really long time to heat up because it's really deep. A certain amount of sea level rise is already locked in. And I don't think that's necessarily demoraliz motivating. That's just reality. We can still prevent the worst case scenario to a large extent. We can stop that global temperature rise. And that's actually a really empowering thought. I think the UN messaging is actually really spot on when they say, look, every ton of carbon dioxide matters and every tenth of a degree matters. Climate change is not a binary thing. It's not you have it or you don't. It's really more like a slope that you slide down and you can decide where to stop and turn around.
- [20:40]
Elise Hu
Yeah. And then also how steep the slope is.
- [20:43]
Kate Marvel
Right, exactly.
- [20:44]
Elise Hu
What did we notice during COVID in that initial year of lockdown and what was happening to the planet when everybody just stayed indoors?
- [20:53]
Kate Marvel
So I think Covid is actually a fascinating example because all of the COVID shutdowns led to a slight increase in the Earth's temperature. And the reason for that is humans emit greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases warm the planet. But humans also emit what we call aerosols, basically typical pollution, stuff that blocks sunlight, stuff that seeds, clouds, which block even more sunlight. And during COVID when we shut down almost everything, we actually saw a decrease in aerosols in what we think of as pollution. And that meant that that sun blocking power was partially removed and so the Earth's temperature might have increased a little bit. Another kind of very interesting part of the COVID shutdowns was that we saw a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, but that decrease was in the single digits. And I think that shows the limits of this individual action framing. Right. People think, oh, I can't do anything about climate change unless I am either the President of the United States or the Secretary General of the UN or conversely, as an individual, I need to drive my carbon footprint down to zero. I need to be perfect. And during COVID nobody was flying around, nobody was driving to the office, and yet emissions only fell by 5 to 7%. And I think that is an argument very, very, very strong and clear that what we're looking at is really a large scale systems transformation, as opposed to people choosing to fly less or drive less or stay at home more. But also, if you try to drive your personal carbon footprint down to zero, you'll find that that's impossible because you are embedded in a society and that's very demotivating. And that is why the Concept of the personal carbon footprint was invented by bp. It's a fossil fuel industry creation.
- [23:12]
Elise Hu
To offload their responsibility onto me as an individual.
- [23:16]
Kate Marvel
Exactly. But we are all part of communities, whether those are your faith community, your school community, your workplace. I don't care if your job has sustainability in the title, if you've got a job, and if your job's on planet Earth, congratulations, you have a climate change shell. And it's in these communities that we can actually start to implement climate solutions. I am actually super comforted by the fact that a lot of climate solutions are really boring. I think that's great. You know, we can use induction as opposed to gas stoves. I have an induction stove. It is now my only personality trait. I invite people over to watch me boil water. It's incredible. But we, we've got that. We've got heat pumps. We can electrify. Industry can choose to make our cities more walkable. We can have more public transit, we can have electric vehicles, we can use land more wisely, we can eat fewer cows and more plants. And all of those things are not enormous and overwhelming and terrifying. They're small and kind of prosaic and boring. But that's what we need to do. And I actually find that super motivating.
- [24:33]
Elise Hu
I'm hearing you tick off all of these great examples, but is there anything that should be happening at scale such that we could have the best possible chance to focus our efforts?
- [24:44]
Kate Marvel
Oh, absolutely. There is a lot more that should be happening at scale. I'm not gonna lie to you. The easiest chapter for me to write in this book was the Rage or anger chapter. Because we're not moving fast enough. The world is taking enormous steps toward decarbonizing. If you told me 15 years ago that solar would be the cheapest way of generating electricity in history, I'm not sure I would have believed you. Well, because for a long time, solar was considered very niche, very expensive. You know, basically only hippies would use solar energy. And now it's just the cheapest form of energy that there is. Prices have fallen by 90% over the last decade. We've seen enormous decreases in wind as well and in battery storage. Those prices are coming down like crazy right now. And so I think things are changing and the problems of climate change are getting worse, but at the same time, the solutions are getting better. Now, are those solutions being implemented at nearly anywhere close to the scale that they need to be? No. There is organized opposition to this. There are people who are willing to tell lies about climate Change in order to pretend it's not a problem or tell lies about renewable energy, to pretend that it's not viable. There's no shortage of people saying things that are not true. But I think we do have almost all of the tools that we need in order to really address climate change, and we have those right now. The question is pushing harder, not giving up, not saying, oh, nobody cares about climate change. And I think it's important to keep pushing, even against headwinds.
- [26:39]
Elise Hu
There's a lot of debates rhetorically about how humans are destroying the planet, but is it as possible that humans will just destroy humans?
- [26:50]
Kate Marvel
I mean, I am 100% sure that there will still be a rock in this position orbiting the sun. Okay, climate change or no climate change. But again, people, higher standards. You know, I don't want humans to destroy humans. I don't want humans to destroy everything on the planet. I think we can do better than that. And so when we talk about saving the planet, I think we should be clear that what we actually mean is saving ourselves.
- [27:21]
Elise Hu
Talk to us a little bit just about how you framed grief in your book and what stage of grief you would say you're in about Earth right now.
- [27:32]
Kate Marvel
Well, every chapter in this book has a scientific through line, an emotional through line, and then a story through line, whether that story is from mythology or history or my own personal life. And so the grief chapter is kind of a meditation on the Earth's past states. The fact that the Earth has been through different climate states in its long 4 billion year history, and how those different eras of Earth history have shaped the places that we love. So in my case, the place that I love most on Earth is Northern California. And I live in New York now. And it's a very strange feeling to watch. Northern California, this beautiful place I love that's been shaped by geologic forces and incredible life like the sequoias and ocean currents. Right. To watch it change from afar, I talk about how it feels a little bit like reading that one of your ex boyfriends has cancer on Facebook. It's, you know, something that once meant so much to you, that was such a part of your life, and to be so far away and to watch it changing and in peril is really a strange sort of grief, you know, I also wanted to talk about how the Earth's past states teach us about where we're going now. Three million years ago, during the era called the Pliocene, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly the same same as they are now, and sea levels were between 20 and 50ft higher. And so that was a very, very different world. I talk about how it's kind of like an uncanny valley. It's recognizably our world. The continents are in the same positions, but there's just something off about it because the coastlines are blurred, the seas are much higher. I talk about the last ice ages and you know, how they shaped Yosemite Valley, one of these place that I love so very much, and how those were caused by natural forces. Those were a consequence of the earth wobbling a little bit in its orbit as it goes around the sun. And how that is a natural, slow geologic time change. And what we're seeing right now, the magnitude of these changes, they are comparable to coming out of an ice age, and yet they are occurring over a human lifetime time. Things are not supposed to be changing that fast. And that's disorienting. And, and for me, it's, it's deeply sad.
- [30:32]
Elise Hu
And please stay with us. We will be right back after a short break. This episode is sponsored by Defender. Are you a trailblazer, a risk taker? Someone with countless tales of epic adventure? Well, even the boldest among us started small, daring themselves to reach greater goals each day. If you're looking to take on a challenge like that, the Defender is. It's a vehicle built for drivers capable of great things, whether they're headed towards uncharted territory or just a weekend getaway. The Defender is a vehicle built to meet challenges head on so you can explore with confidence. It's not just tough with a rigid body design tested to the extreme, it's smart with next gen technology like 3D surround cameras that let you see under the vehicle and a clear sight rear view mirror so you can always see what's behind you even if the back window's blocked. It makes driving and parking simpler with driver aid technologies and intuitive driver displays that are customizable to your choice journey. Explore the full Defender lineup@land roverusa.com the best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people Ever get an ad that makes you wonder if the Internet really knows you? For weeks I was served ads for high performance surfboards, except I can't surf, even though I have tried many times. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com TedTalks that's LinkedIn.com TedTalks. Terms and conditions apply.
- [32:23]
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- [33:00]
Elise Hu
You share in the book your experience with living with a blood clot that was first discovered in 2022 that potentially could kill you. You. And you wrote about how it had a real impact on the way you view the world. Can you talk a little bit more about your experience?
- [33:19]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, absolutely. You know, a question that I've been thinking about a lot throughout my entire life is my relationship to nature as a human being, are we part of nature? Are we separate from nature? What does that question actually mean? What is. What is my place in this world? And. And having had a health scare and essentially being saved by the intervention of modern medicine, I am now an unnatural being. Nature does not want me to be here. And yet nature brings me solace. Nature has importance beyond how it makes me feel. And this realization that as humans were both part of and separate from nature. Who cares? We're gonna have to constantly renegotiate our relationship with nature. And. And that's what you have to do in any relationship that matters. Yeah, that's what relationships are.
- [34:22]
Elise Hu
That's actually a great segue to parenting because it does feel like a constant negation of yourself.
- [34:30]
Kate Marvel
Right.
- [34:31]
Elise Hu
Or what you thought of as yourself. And then there's a lot of ego death that has to be involved when you have children, either small ones or teenagers or adult ones. Let's talk a little bit about hope and love, since we are both parents. And I think there's a lot of collective guilt going on right now, especially in the face of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters. The climate change effects on the next generation are very clear. And yet again There seems be to, to be a lack of urgent action at scale about how to deal with it. So how do you answer for yourself this question of whether it's responsible to have children right now?
- [35:15]
Kate Marvel
I think there are many reasons not to have children. There are many reasons to have children. There are children, there are children in the world whether or not we have them. And I think we all have a responsibility to children, whether or not we personally made them. I think that when we think about having kids in the context of hope or love. When I talk to my kids about the future, I've got a five year old and a nine year old. So when I talk to the nine year old about the future, we don't talk about hope as something you have, we talk about hope as something you do. You know, for me, this question of, of do you have hope for the future is kind of like asking do you have hope you can clean your bathroom? Like, I don't know, clean your bathroom? Like that's a weird question. Yeah, you know, you know what, you know what to do. And we talk about all of the solutions, we talk about all of the things that we can do. And we talk about how both. He is inheriting problems, but he will have to grow up to be part of the solution, which is something that I think has been true, true for all of human history. These particular problems are incredibly daunting. But part of growing up is trying to find your place and trying to repair the world. Trying to find your place and making the world a better place.
- [36:46]
Elise Hu
How do you balance both the grief that you're feeling, but also the wonder and the hope and the love and all of the various feelings that you describe throughout the book?
- [36:57]
Kate Marvel
Oh, I mean, very badly.
- [36:58]
Elise Hu
Do you just kind of shift from one to the other over the course of six minutes or six hours?
- [37:04]
Kate Marvel
Complete mess. I mean, I definitely should not be in the position of giving anybody any advice in how to manage their feelings.
- [37:12]
Elise Hu
And that's not what this book is.
- [37:13]
Kate Marvel
Right.
- [37:14]
Elise Hu
It's a reflection on the feelings, right?
- [37:16]
Kate Marvel
Yeah. I mean the feelings are a narrative device. They're a framing device of all of the trouble, different things that we can feel about the science that is true and the stories that inform it. But I do, I let myself feel all of these things. And I think it's important to note that feeling one thing does not preclude feeling something else. You know, you are allowed to feel wonder and awe at the incredibleness of this planet. You are also allowed to feel sad. You are allowed to feel guilty and Feeling one of those things does not mean that you don't feel another. And I think that's a message that I do think is really important to get across. And in my view, this is just the most interesting thing that's happening on the planet right now.
- [38:07]
Elise Hu
We talked a little bit about solutions earlier. I want to shift to some tech solutions because there is a lot of hope in modern technologies, whether it's AI, carbon capture. We talked about renewables to help slow down the rate of global warming. What is your take on the innovation that's coming about? And is it enough to get to a more flourishing future?
- [38:36]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, I have a lot of feelings about different parts of innovation. I think innovation that leads to cheaper, better, more reliable, low carbon technologies. That's extremely heartening. That's great to see innovation in how we electrify stuff that currently uses fossil fuels. That's really exciting. I have a whole chapter of the book, the Pride chapter, where I talk about kind of the two most overwhelmingly giant techno solutions that have been proposed. One of which is solar radiation management or literally blocking the sun to cool down the planet, and one of which is carbon dioxide removal. So basically hacking the planet to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then.
- [39:27]
Elise Hu
Once it's removed, it's supposed to be buried. Is that right?
- [39:30]
Kate Marvel
Well, there's different ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Okay, we know how to do it because it's been happening for approximately 4 billion years.
- [39:41]
Elise Hu
Plants do it.
- [39:42]
Kate Marvel
Yeah, plants do it. Exactly. You know, I have been a scientist for decades now and nobody has ever been able to convince me that photosynthesis is not magic. I mean, they make their own food out of thin air. That's bananas. And so we have things that are taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is true that we cannot just plant our way out of climate change. There's not enough land, there cannot be enough trees to, to absorb all of our carbon dioxide emissions if we don't also take steps to reduce them. The magnitude of the problem is so enormous. Trying to remove the 40 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide that we are currently pumping in the atmosphere is an incredibly tall order. We can't just do it by planting trees. We can't. We can't just do it by trying to make more phytoplankton grow in the ocean. We certainly can't just do it by building artificial trees that suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I think there's a lot of technologies that can be part of the solution, but they absolutely will not work if we don't also redouble our efforts to reduce those emissions in the first place. The way I think about carbon dioxide removal is it's a little bit like having your stomach pumped. You want that to be an option, but you should probably stop drinking poison.
- [41:18]
Elise Hu
Yeah, that's a really cinematic analogy. What kind of advice do you have to offer someone who might be looking to turn climate advocacy or their research into a career?
- [41:33]
Kate Marvel
Ooh, that's a hard one, because everything is very much in flux right now. I would say that the scariest thing about climate change is also, I think, the most encouraging thing about climate action. And that's that emissions come from nearly everything that modern humans do. And that means that addressing that requires nearly every skill set that modern human beings have. So whatever you are good at, at whatever you're passionate about, you can find a role in helping drive climate action. If you are a storyteller, tell stories about climate change. If you are a journalist, find ways to report on climate change that are going to resonate with audiences. If you work in procurement, find ways to incorporate climate action in the things that you buy. There are so many ways to get in. And you don't need to be a scientist, you don't need to be an engineer, although those are great things to be highly recommended. But there's a place and meaningful action for all of us.
- [42:57]
Elise Hu
Before we wrap up, Kate, we've talked in this conversation about various feelings, hope, fear, grief, wonder, love. So my last question is, what's keeping you? What do you lean on to actually do hope? As you talk about, I try to.
- [43:15]
Kate Marvel
Find out new things about the world and how it works every day. And having access to that sense of wonder and awe and gratitude about living on this planet is really nourishing. I have really reduced my social media use and started reading more long physical paper books. I find that to be extremely comforting. And it feels almost subversive, you know, to pay sustained attention to something that is not making somebody money. Right. You know, to sit down and to read something like War and Peace and thinking like no corporation is benefiting from this right now, that feels like an act of rebellion almost. So, you know, I. I do find that really comforting. I find in person connection to. To be really, really helpful because it helps that actually this is why climate change matters. It doesn't matter because it's going to put this rock in space in peril. But what matters is communities. What matters is people. And what matters is us. And I find that to be a reminder that this matters. And we can go on and we have to win this fight.
- [44:40]
Elise Hu
Kate Marvel, that was a lovely, lovely conversation. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your analogies, your powerful analogies and your scientific analysis with us.
- [44:51]
Kate Marvel
Oh, thank you so much. I've had so much fun.
- [44:57]
Elise Hu
That was Kate Marvel in conversation with me, Elise Hu, for the TED Talks Daily Book Club. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more@ted.com curate guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene and Tanzika Sangmarnival. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. It's so funny, Kate, that you brought up physical books, because I have a friend who went to an Ithaca book sale the other day and said he bought a ton of DVDs and feels delighted to own them because he would rather own them in that physical media rather than pay someone else else $30 a month to be able to theoretically access them.
- [46:05]
Kate Marvel
Totally. Like, I think there is going to be a huge market for not smart technology, right? Like, I don't want my refrigerator connected to the Internet, you know.
- [46:16]
Elise Hu
The reason we started talking about this is because I have this DVD of Sharknado the movie, like the movie Sharknado. And he was like, Sharknado might not be streamable some. So you should be glad that you have Sharknado because you live every day with the ability to watch it.
- [46:35]
Kate Marvel
I do have great confidence that Sharknado will endure. Sharknado is going to survive me in some format.
- [46:53]
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- [48:39]
Elise Hu
Of what you need.
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