The best of climate communication

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, April 30th, 2024 - 6 comments
Categories: climate change - Tags: ,

Hands down, this is one of the best pieces of climate communication I have ever seen.

Environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben nails it in two minutes. Transcript below, but the video is better.

Climate change is unique among our political problems in that it comes with these really tough time limits. Once you’ve melted the Arctic, no-one has a plan for how you freeze it back up again.

Climate change is unique among our political problems in that it comes with these really tough time limits. Once you’ve melted the Arctic, no-one has a plan for how you freeze it back up again.

We’re kind of used to problems that exist forever and we make incremental progress on them. As long as I’ve been alive America’s been debating whether or not to have National healthcare like every other industrialised country. I imagine someday that we’ll eventually do it and I hope it’s soon because people die and go bankrupt every year when we don’t. 

But the fact that we’ve delayed doesn’t make it harder to solve the problem when we eventually get there. 

Climate change isn’t like that. Climate change is this series of ratchets that work one way.

No-one can set a kind of exact drop dead date for planet Earth, you know when climate change will just overwhelm us. We’ve already raised the temperature of the earth pretty near a degree and a half celsius, which is causing extraordinary problems. 

The North and South poles are melting. The hydrological cycle, the way that water moves around the planet, is completely disrupted so we have way more flood and way more drought. That’s going to get worse at  2° C and worse again at 3°.

Compromise is a very useful thing in a democratic society that’s how most of our problems are solved. You think that there should be no minimum wage because you’re a Libertarian, I think the minimum wage should be 30 bucks an hour cuz that’s what it takes to live. We meet in the middle at 15 bucks and we come back in a few years to argue it out again.

That not how climate change works. The negotiation that’s going on here isn’t between Democrats and Republicans, or environmentalists and industrialists. The deepest negotiation is between human beings and physics and physics is a very poor negotiator. It’s just going to do what it’s going to do so our job is to meet the bar that it sets.

Full video is on youtube.

6 comments on “The best of climate communication ”

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  1. mikesh 1
    30 April 2024 at 12:48 pm

    I agree. It's one of the best.

  2. Drowsy M. Kram 2
    30 April 2024 at 1:00 pm

    … physics is a very poor negotiator.

    Concise and accurate video – thanks for posting it.

  3. Obtrectator 3
    30 April 2024 at 1:13 pm

    Bang on the money, Bill. I would add to that one of my favourite aphorisms: Mother Nature is the ultimate quartermaster, and she ain't got no secret reserve stores.

    • Hunter Thompson II 3.1
      6 May 2024 at 10:12 am

      I’m sure the good people of Texas would agree the hydrological cycle has been disrupted.

      “In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments; there are consequences".
      Robert Greene Ingersoll – 1881

  4. Eco maori 4
    30 April 2024 at 2:23 pm

    Kia ora We should study the practical idea of a huge sun shade out in space. This would effect every nation equally. We still need to eliminate our greenhouse gasses but this could save our polar ice sheets and all the glaciers

    Ka kite ano

  5. Tabletennis 5
    30 April 2024 at 2:31 pm

    "… and physics is a very poor negotiator"

    love it, delicious statement

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