Male Voice Over:

The UTS for climate podcast series is made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology of Sydney and audio production as funded by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research.

Erika Wagner:

How we talk about things, shapes how others feel about them. So why is it so hard to speak about climate change from Al Gore telling us it’s an inconvenient truth.

Al Gore ‘New thinking on the climate crisis’ on TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_new_thinking_on_the_climate_crisis/transcript#t-300800

We need a world wide global mobilization for renewable energy, conservation efficiency, and a global transition to a low carbon economy we have work to do,

Erika Wagner:

…or Trump’s strange tirade against green energy.

President Donald Trump – ‘I never understood wind’: Trump goes on bizarre tirade against wind turbines’ on The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/23/trump-bizarre-tirade-windmills]

I never understood wind. I do know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody. They’re noisy, they kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard, go under a windmill someday.

Erika Wagner:

So it seems that scientific evidence alone is not enough to convince all our world leaders of the ecological crisis facing us. But although a vast number of people and governments acknowledge the true scale of the problem, why do so many leaders seem to be in denial of the urgency of acting on climate change?

Erika Wagner:

Hi, I’m Erika Wagner. I study marine science in Sydney, Australia, and you’re listening to UTS 4 Climate, a podcast where we bring together leading thinkers from politics, economics, science, and journalism to continue the conversation about climate, our futures and what changes we’d like to see in the world.

Erika Wagner:

Today on UTS 4 Climate in our second episode, we’re going to be discussing how to talk about climate change in a way that makes a difference and try to understand our emotional responses to this topic.

Erika Wagner:

Maybe the mention of our climate future makes you feel anxious, angry, scared, or just attached. If so, you’re not alone. Learning to talk about climate change and having meaningful conversations with those who agree and disagree with you on the subject is a powerful step you can take to get the action on climate we need.

Erika Wagner:

We’re going to be hearing from the Honorable Bob Carr, new South Wales, longest serving Premier and a former Foreign Minister of Australia. Bob is an Industry Professor of Climate and Business at UTS and he’s joined by Dr. Rebecca Huntley.

Erika Wagner:

She’s going to tell us what Australians think about climate and why they think it. Rebecca is a social researcher and the author of a book on this topic is called How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes A Difference. Here’s Bob asking Rebecca her opinion on how he tried to talk about climate change.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I wrote to one of Australia’s very wealthy business leaders, someone who believes passionately in climate and works in that space. And I suggested that he buy a couple of thousand copies of a book you’re familiar with. You quoted here, The Uninhabitable Earth, a frightening book about where we stand on climate. And I suggested he buy these thousands of copies and get them out to every leading thinker, every policy maker, every political leader in Australia. And I didn’t get a reply. So what did I do wrong there? What advice would you give me?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I think it’s a wonderful idea. I’m not quite sure why he didn’t do it. Even if he had done it, I can imagine that many of those leaders would have opened the first page and thought ‘this is alarmism. And where is my opportunity to make a contribution? Or what’s the entry point’. Having read that book, one of my friends joked and said, it’s not the. Uninhabitable Earth, it’s the endless scream or endless despair.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

To be honest, I didn’t finish it.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I read it mainly because I wanted to write the full spectrum of literature on this. And I keep it almost as a totemic thing in my office to say, this is the extreme stuff at stake, but I think we know and the research I do shows that it can’t, that cannot be the beginning of the conversation, because if it’s the beginning of the conversation, what happens is you trigger a whole series of very ingrained and very effective defense mechanisms.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Whether that be anger, fear, people turn away. They might feel an extraordinary sense of guilt and shame about what’s happening. And so anything that makes people turn away from getting into a conversation about climate, I try and avoid.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I know that we’re on the same page here is when you really get into it, you have those moments, you can read something like The Uninhabitable Earth and it really does make you reflect and think, but that is much further down the track. I want to get people into the conversation as easily as possible, and that’s not quite the way to do it.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

The book’s very comprehensive when you’re looking at how it works, how the conversation works in America, not only in Australia, but does anything stand out for you as a really successful way of getting people who have previously been resistant or reluctant to start talking climate?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

There’s a number of really interesting movements and in a sense, they’re not, wide-scale, they’re often quite localised and specific. So it exists to some extent here, but also more effectively in America, which are Farmers For Climate Action. And I suppose what interests me about farmers or interest me about, for example, religious leaders talking about climate action is that we do need to start to disrupt people’s notions of who cares about climate because climate change has become so politicised as you’ve noticed over the last probably 20 years, but it’s been a 30 year process, we get so used to the normal kinds of spokespeople on climate.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

It’s Al Gore and it’s certain politicians and it’s certain kinds of celebrity environmentalists. And people expect to hear about climate from them. And if you don’t fit into their worldview or you don’t necessarily like them, then the climate message can fall flat.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I’m really interested in any movement in rural and regional areas, particularly around farmers, because we normally associate them with conservative views on climate. And I’m also really interested in notions of religious leaders talking about climate as well and how we can mobilise faith.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Let’s take both of those, start with the farmers, where does a farmer need to be open to arguments about climate? What does he or she have to be thinking about? Would it be their own soil resilience, for example, or the shift in the pattern of droughts? What triggers it?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I think what’s so interesting in the work that I’ve done and seen on farmers, is that what they see particularly if the land that they are working is something that their grandparents worked and their great grandparents worked. So they’ve got a kind of an historical tie to the land as they’ve seen that the things that used to work for their parents and grandparents don’t work so much anymore.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And most of those farmers who’ve had this environmental epiphany and they’re certainly not the majority, but they are really interesting people. They say, “look, we’re all doing… We’re all noticing the climate changing. And we’re all doing climate mitigation. We’re all on our farms. We’re all having to change up what we do in order to be able to sustain the land. And some people obviously can’t.”

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

But the thing is those people who haven’t accepted the science almost kind of, there’s a cognitive dissonance. They’re seeing things change and very few farmers in Australia and in parts of America would say that things haven’t changed. They just can’t and don’t want to make that connection with climate.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So what those really effective Farmers For Climate do is they say, look, we try and have those conversations over the back fence and the pub about it but sometimes the resistance can be too much. So in the end, as long as we’re getting farmers to change what they do and change up what they do. And of course a lot of them are already investing in renewable energy. They might not believe in climate change, but they’ve got water tanks. They’ve got solar, they’ve got wind. And they believe in that.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So if you get them to do the actions, you don’t always necessarily have to push them into the belief of the science. The difficulty is of course at the political level, getting them to vote for anything other than the Nationals and Farmers and Shooters personally in Australia is quite difficult to do. So that political behaviour is a problem.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I don’t want to be partisan, but the gap between farmers with whom you can have a conversation about those issues and their political representation, the National party simply refusing to budge from thermal coal is very real.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

It is and I may not… I mean, you would have reflections on this as well. I mean, having in new South Wales, is this a question of policy or this sense of a cultural and social sense of loyalty?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I mean, in the research that I do in rural and regional Australia, a lot of those voters are very, very disappointed with the National party on all kinds of levels. This is why we’ve seen Shooters and Fishers do so well in New South Wales, but the idea that they would vote for any other party, they still feel that the National party has at least some interest in country people. And so they vote reluctantly they might vote despondently, but the options aren’t there for them. So it’s a cultural and social thing. It’s not necessarily a rational thing.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Let’s take the issue of faith-based embrace of climate or rejection of climate action. If one were a conservative evangelical, perhaps a Pentecostalist, perhaps in Hillsong, are you bound to see climate as coming from the secular left leaning liberal faction with whom you are at odds on so many other fronts and therefore are you bound to say I can’t accept it?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And again, this shows that the damage of pulling climate into the culture wars and into this kind of highly partisan environment has meant. I mean, what intrigued me when I started to look at this notion of faith and climate is that peak bodies of all religions have spoken out quite strongly about climate. And in certain countries, there’s very strong networks of climate advocates through faith based organizations and even amongst evangelicals, not Pentecostals, but evangelical.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So there’s a very famous, and I want to say one of my favorite climate communicators, a woman called Katharine Hayhoe in the United States. She’s a climate scientist, but also an evangelical Christian married to an evangelical Christian pastor. And she talks about her concern of climate is driven by her religious beliefs. But I think you’re right. I think that there are-

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

She stands out though, doesn’t she?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

… She’s really does.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

She’s being mentioned to me as one of the spokespeople for the eco-right in America, someone who’s whenever he tests signed up conservative or Republican, but she embraces the urgency of climate action.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Yeah, absolutely and I suppose if you’re a genuine conservative, you want to keep the kinds of institutions that have been around for hundreds of years, whether that be your church or your government or your… The local land that you love, why you wouldn’t take climate seriously is beyond me.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

But you say here, page 38, “climate change skepticism and even denial in the US have become part of a cluster of beliefs along with anti abortion, anti immigration that are obvious markers of Republican allegiance.”

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

That’s absolutely right. And then it means then there’s yet another barrier. So along with all the cognitive barriers, along with all the other barriers about accepting climate change, there’s also a cultural, social, political ideological barrier that you have to hurdle to get to a point that is let’s face it and this is what I realised when I had this kind of shift in my personal and professional life towards climate means you live with a constant level of uncertainty and unhappiness, which makes COVID look like a bit of a walk in the park to tell you the truth.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

If you really accept the truth of climate change into your life, like I know I’m saying it in a very kind of religious way, but if you really, if you go, well, actually we don’t have all the time in the world in Australia, we’ve gone to and fro, to and fro on this issue, you feel time ticking, you feel that in your children’s lifetime, this is going to be an enormous concern. Then you live with a level of constant uncertainty.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I kind of get why people don’t want to hurdle all those cognitive and social and their cultural hurdles to get to a place of discomfort, because it’s not fun.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Is young Greta Thunberg a barrier or a help?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I think there’s absolutely no doubt that she sparked a global movement of young people almost defying the way we characterise young people these days as an Instagram generation, only concerned about their mobile phones and all the kinds of terrible cliches we say about young people.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

She sparked a movement that defied our views about them and got them out on the streets in peaceful protest, saying, what’s the point of going to school and learning about science and doing well, if you haven’t created a livable future.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And I think about that, my daughter is 12 and my twins are five. And if I’m to take what the scientists tell us about the small window of opportunity, 10 to 15 or whatever years to really genuinely turn this around, my children won’t have, even my youngest ones won’t have even approached the HSC.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I think that this quiet, but powerful protests from children has been incredibly important. Now what happens of course, is that movements throw up heroes, we always tend to want to personify a movement in an individual. And no matter what she does, if she decides to get angry or she decides to scold adults, or she decides to do whatever she does, or she’s going to be a lightning rod for right wing criticism absolutely. But also some discomfort from the middle thinking, Oh, I don’t know how I feel about this.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

There’s something unearthly about it-

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Absolutely.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

… It is as if she could play Joan of Arc very well.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Couldn’t she and it didn’t end well for Joan of Arc, did it? I mean, but when I look at somebody like we’re not, I mean I was… Luckily last year I was trained by former Vice President Al Gore. He came to Australia and did some fantastic training, so much energy, so much passion. And we have some very prominent environmentalists who have been incredibly effective and then sometimes start to turn people off.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

The solution is not to continue to attack. The solution is for us to throw up more spokespeople. The more  diverse as we can have the movement and people talking about it, the better it is. So you might look at Vice President Al Gore and admire him. But if you’re a conservative, who’s never voted for him, didn’t like him. You really need somebody else talking about this issue to you in a way that you identify with.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And so that’s what I advocate, not sidelining those people, but surrounding them with different kinds of people.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

It is a challenge, I’ve looked at the evidence on the ecoright in America and you do get breakthroughs, for example, an article in the respected Foreign Affairs magazine, jointly authored by James Baker and George Shultz, two former Republican Secretaries of State saying climate is real, it’s an international security issue, it’s geo-strategic and its implications actually saying, we need cooperation with China on this front and then coming to the hard policy choice saying the simplest thing to do would be a carbon tax with all the proceeds being returned to the American taxpayer.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I did notice that there are some on the ecoright, a former Republican Congressman who pushes this line very strongly that the simple elegance of the carbon tax with all proceeds being returned to American families in tax cuts, but none has emerged as a national spokesperson.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I would love to have a leader of climate action from the right or to go back to what we touched on a moment ago, someone from the one of the faith communities, the conservative wing of a faith community, not a progressive but a conservative evangelical.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Let’s think about it in the Australian context, to what extent does the way in which the conservative right in Australia and in the United States allow for somebody like that to emerge? They would have to be at such a level of authority to be able to make that shift that nobody could knock them down.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Now we would have thought Malcolm Turnbull would have been at that point in Australia and there was-

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

They didn’t allow him-

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

… They just did not allow him.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

They threatened his leadership were he to push hard.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Absolutely and as much as you and at least you would know there’s many, many critics outside the tent and people constantly criticise him for being not brave enough and all the rest of it. I just think it was an extraordinarily difficult task and in the end, the system around him wasn’t going to allow him even an inch to move on that question.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And again, it’s something I’ve just got difficulty understanding. If one were a conservative, wanting to conserve institutions to minimise disruptive change, surely it’s a logical step to say, I want to conserve this battered old planet of ours with its landscapes and ecologies, even if you’re a faith based person to say, so redolent of what God gifted us.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

God’s, the natural world is a God’s cathedrals. Let’s save not to spoil it. So I think it continues to be a mystery. This is conservative resistance in the face of scientific evidence.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Doomers. You spend some pages on a small movement embodied by American novelist, Jonathan Franzen, arguing, it’s impossible to see humanity responding to this. We are for better or for worse, we’re living with it, but fatalist

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Fatalist, absolutely fatalist. I think what’s interesting. And I think we’re going to see numerous splinter groups as they always are kind of difficult moments of time. There are people who come from the kind of Jem Bendell he wrote a book on an inspired and sanctioned rebellion who said that look, humanity will survive, but in a very dramatically different kind of environment-

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Degraded compromised.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

… So let’s start to prepare for that now. Whereas doomers actually think, we’re done for and there’s almost a kind of a euphoria in it.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah, done wrong. Ending the world.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Exactly. And a kind of a disregard for anybody who thinks otherwise. And I think that there are those people who look the full science in the face and look at the human response, which has been so patchy and reluctant, although it is getting better and recognise that, but also say we need to continue to try.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I think within that spectrum, there are those who completely give up and the people who are well let’s prepare for what is going to happen and let’s retain what we can retain. And I think there’s a significant difference between those two.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah. And it’s a great motivation you settle on reproducing that famous recruiting poster from World War Two, youngsters at the daddy’s armchair, daddy, what did you do in the great war? And I imagine that there must be some parents, at least contemplating the question being asked by the youngsters, hang on in those decades, when we had the opportunity to make a difference, what did you do? Because now in 2030 2045, we can see where we got to. What had you been doing back when a difference might’ve been made?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

That’s right. And that was the biggest motivation for me, which is that I think it’s quite likely with three children that they will, although they grow up with a real understanding of climate change and a kind of environmental awareness. That was not something that I grew up with. There’s so many layers to my commitment to this, but there is a bit of a preparing myself for when they say, what did you do or say, well, I took the thing that I was best at, which was understanding people and telling organisations of all kinds, whose job it is to persuade those people, whether to vote, do something, buy something.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I spent every moment of my time and all of my intellectual effort into understanding why people feel the way they do and helping persuaders persuade and we got a compost bin. I did my best and in the sense, I think that’s all we can do.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

We can look at not necessarily all joining Extinction Rebellion. Think about what it is that I’m good at? What professional am I my part of? What networks do I have? And how can I make a contribution through that?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I think it’s a lot to ask people to dramatically change their life or their profession, but no matter what we do, there’s always a contribution we can make beyond voting and beyond education. And that’s what I hope out of the book, anybody who might pick it up no matter what they do or feel the spot to do that a bit more in their work.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah. I even constructed this conceit of a little book. I wrote a Run for Your Life, a political memoir of being alive in 2050.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Yes. I remember that piece, it is fantastic.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And being called to account by the Australian branch of a wide ranging international inquiry, UN inquiry, and being called to account about what I had done and being able to point to the world’s first carbon trading scheme and conservation of forest and range of other things. But I think if you accept the notion, someone one day might ask you, that’s a powerful reason to settle on what you said. I think that’s a useful formulation too, given my skills, what should I be doing now if I’m going to have to account for it to my kids?

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

That’s right. And I think the other really common thing that came out from all the activists I talked to, and there was a real diverse range of activists in the book. And all of the psychological studies is that we can think about what can we personally do, but it only makes real sense. And is really fortified by that sense of collective action.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And even the most powerful amongst us, a former Premier or a former Prime Minister, there’s a limit to how much you can do individually if you don’t bring the group of people around you with you.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So whether that’s your cabinet, your political party, your profession, your community, and the one thing that I hope we get a bit from COVID, particularly if we manage to survive it at the current taping, it feels pretty horrible what’s happening in Victoria, is that people understand that unified action, collective action, clear political leadership with at least some basic trust in government and some basic systems of government that are functioning, can do a lot, can save lives, protect the healthcare system, protect communities, keep the economy ticking over and hopefully we have a renewed sense and confidence of how critical those things are to our everyday life.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Current Australian political leadership state and federal feeling its way you’re getting some things wrong, but retreating from that, trying to make it good. And people seem to reward that. This is a model for a conversation between elected leaders and their publics about solving a big problem. And that resonates when we talk climate.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

That’s exactly right. And I think as much, lots of experts in epidemia, amateur experts and epidemiology these days, but the role, for example, of Chief Medical Officers and other experts who say, look, this is and spokespeople like Norman Swan, rather than the kind of usual commentariat who have a theory that, we’re over overreacting on all the rest of that in Australia, we do, we are starting to see that expert opinion about this is how it spreads. This is what consequences are. These are the things you can do.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So I’m excited that’s happening and hopefully that blows through to climate ongoing.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

In my early days as party leader, I’d given a speech, a total failure to a gathering in parliament house and a Catholic priest who used to write for The Australian, came up to me and he gave me some very potent advice.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

He said, Bob, there were some good things in your speech, but he said, just think of the way the Lord did it. He did it through parables, through telling stories. And I thought of that encounter 30 years ago, when I looked at your strong recommendation here, win the argument with story, it’s not bad advice, as soon as you tell a story, you get attention.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

Yeah absolutely. And I think that understandably for a long time, the climate conversation has started with the science and we needed to. We actually did need to get the community across the science to some extent, but there were limits to how much the science can get us further along. And it’s these stories of transformation of recognition that the climate is changing. And this is what I’m doing. This is how I’m making this happen.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

The story about a farmer, for example, changing their practices as a result of undeniable evidence of a change in weather.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And knowing that their neighbors might not agree with them, but also knowing that those changes that they’re making prepare their land to be able to be farmed by future generations.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

So we also need to tell some of the glimmers of hope as part of that story, not necessarily just the, this is really happening and it’s rocked my world. And so I’m fascinated by really good storytelling. And the other thing I only delved into a little bit in the book, but is coming out a lot in the research I do is the power of images to change people’s view when they see something happening or when they have a kind of experience.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

I mean, there would be people who saw some of the images of the bushfires, who were already concerned about climate, that pushed them towards the alarm category. Other people who thought that had nothing to do with it, but there was something about seeing the images of people, for me as somebody who was already concerned, but seeing images of people huddling on a beach, it was that particular image of that woman with her children in the water clinging to a jetty.

Dr Rebecca Huntley:

And I thought, well, these almost feel like wartime images and people driven into the sea because there’s just actually nowhere to go and yeah, very powerful.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Well, Rebecca Huntley, thanks for spending time and good luck in promoting it. It’s called How To Talk About Climate Change In A Way That Makes A Difference. Something that many of us have thought about.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Rebecca, it’s a great book. I strongly recommend it and thanks for being with us once again.

Erika Wagner:

That was social researcher Rebecca Huntley and conversation with UTS Industry Professor, the Honourable Bob Carr on July 10th earlier this year.

Erika Wagner:

Next time on UTS 4 Climate, we’re going to take a look at how devastating fires changed the way our communities think about climate and what social and economic changes we need to happen to make an impact.

Erika Wagner:

To discuss this we’re going to hear from Independent MP for Warringah Zali Steggall who was elected in 2019 on a platform of pursuing national climate action.

Zali Steggall OAM, MP:

We need to be more collaborative. We need to seek to understand before being understood. You have to understand people’s position. Why are they concerned about taking stronger action on decarbonising? What are their reluctance?

Zali Steggall OAM, MP:

And Martijn Wilder, a founding partner of Pollination Group, a climate change advisory and investment firm. Martine is considered a world leader in climate law and sustainable investing.

Martijn Wilder AM:

One thing that many people don’t understand is that Australia has led the world on the efficiency of solar panels. We are world leaders in that space. So that’s fantastic, it’s exciting, it’s Australian ingenuity. There’s a lot of examples where we can lead the decarbonisation race.

Erika Wagner:

That’s next time on UTS 4 climate I’m Erida Wagner. Thanks for listening. And if you want to continue the discussion about climate change and see some of the inspiring projects, UTS researchers are working on go to the UTS full climate website, just head to UTS4climate.uts.edu.edu.

Male Voice Over:

UTS 4 Climate was created in response to the 2019 students strike for climate. It is a statement of the university’s commitment to addressing the global problem of climate change through our research, our curriculum and operations.

Male Voice Over:

The UTS 4 Climate podcast is made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology of Sydney in collaboration with the Institute for sustainable futures. At Impact Studios, we combine academic research with audio storytelling for real-world impact. The production team live on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora whose lands were never ceded.