Katharine Hayhoe: Talking About Christian Climate Action Is a Gospel Issue

Good faith wishes to thank our production partner on this series of episodes, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, supporting inclusive higher education and health care, vibrant spiritual communities, and a clean environment, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, investing in our common future. The root issue that causes people to reject the reality of this has nothing to do with science, has nothing to do with education, it has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with solution of version. They've been told that the solutions are communist or they'll take away their freedom. You can't eat this, you can't do this, you can't have this. That's what they've been told. And so no wonder they don't want to say this is real because they think all the solutions are bad. When we see ourselves in the solutions and we see solutions that give people more food and water who need it to our hungry, who improve people's health, who are currently suffering, who give people safer places to live, who help us share the love of God with others, then often our objections to the issue evaporate. Welcome to the Good Fade podcast, where friends who follow Jesus help each other make sense of the world. I'm your host, Curtis Chang. The podcast is produced by a nonpartisan 501c3 organization. Good faith is doing three episodes in a series on the topic of Christians and climate change. Spread over a couple of months, these episodes will examine what it means for followers of Jesus to care for God's creation at this particular historic moment. Now a key partner in our series is Ben Lowe, Executive Director of A-Rosha USA. A-Rosha is a leading organization helping Christians and churches engage in caring for creation as part of their discipleship and witness. Ben, welcome to the Good Faith Podcast. Thanks Curtis. This is great to be with you all. Now Ben, I care about this topic, but I don't consider myself an expert, but I have to say in the work of creating this series, I have never struggled as much as I've struggled with this series in terms of giving just a very basic title to it. Because the title I want to give is the one that we ended up giving, which is Christians and climate change. And I use the term climate change because it makes clear what we're talking about. It's the term everybody really uses to kind of realize, oh, okay, this is the topic. And yet we've got an advice from a number of folks saying to us, oh, stay away from that term climate change. Can you explain how and why this term has become kind of a hot button term within at least some Christian circles? Sure, Curtis. And hopefully this will be a bit encouraging because I'll note a couple things. First, the majority of Christians, including church leaders and especially younger generations, let the scientific consensus around climate change. And many of our communities are experiencing its impacts these days. So the question now is less about whether it's happening and more about what we call it and more about what we can do to address it. And second, as study after study show, the remaining sensitivity around climate change in some circles is not primarily driven by our theology or our science, but by political polarization and that's true both for the general public as well as for us Christians. I think this is good news because it means that the more we rely on our good theology and science to guide us here, instead of political personalities, the more faithful we can be. What if it really important personalities is our first guest for this series, Dr. Catherine Hayho. Catherine is the chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy and she's also a professor of public policy at Texas Tech University. But I don't think those titles come close to conveying her importance to this topic in the field. Can you explain why she's such an important voice? Catherine is such a generous supporter of Arashi USA. She serves on our advisory council and we are so grateful for her. I think at first off, Catherine is a top climate scientist and if she's done so much to improve our understanding of what's going on and what we can do about it. But second, Catherine has a remarkable ability to take really complex scientific issues and talk about them in such clear and accessible ways so that we can make sense of them. It's really a gift. And finally, I'd say Catherine is an outspoken evangelical Christian like many of us are and like many of us, she cares about climate change not in spite of her faith but precisely because of it. Well, that's a great intro to her and here's my conversation with Dr. Catherine Heo. Catherine, welcome to the Good Faith Podcast. It's an honor to have you join us. Thank you so much for having me, Curtis. Why I was so fascinated and have been a follower of your work is because you are a leading scientist studying the long term trends happening to our planet. And you're also a committed Christian and you've been very public about that. So I want to talk about both sides, but I want to start by asking you to share with our listeners what your faith journey has been like. Well for me, the reason why I am a climate scientist is quite literally because I'm a Christian. If I weren't a Christian, I don't think I would be a climate scientist. I grew up in a Christian home where my dad was a science teacher. So I've always loved science per se and I learned from age one that the Bible is God's written word and creation, nature, the universe is God's expressed word. And I grew up with a perspective that makes so much sense but is sadly lacking, I think, in a lot of our discussions today, which is if we truly believe that God created the universe and inspired the Bible, then how could what we believe? Possibly be in conflict with what science is discovering? Isn't it just a case of we don't have a complete understanding? Sometimes we misinterpret the Bible through our very thick cultural lenses. Often with science, we just don't know enough and we learn more later on. And so I certainly have a list of questions that when I get to heaven, I want answered about seeming disparities or discrepancies between science and faith, but I operate from the basic premise that if there appears to be a disagreement between them, it's because of our limited understanding, not because of any inherent conflict if they both come from the same creator. So that was an incredibly and sadly unique, I think, environment to grow up in. But for us, the faith part was always central. So I accepted Christ into my heart when I was four years old. When I was nine years old, our family moved down to South America to serve as missionaries and local church there. And that was another pivotal moment for me because growing up there as a child and a teenager, having friends who lived in homes that could be washed away by heavy rainfall, didn't have running water, didn't know where to go when food was not available, when there was a famine or a drought. It made me much more conscious, obviously, of how dependent all of us are on the bounty that creation provides and how vulnerable we are when that is not available. So then returning to Canada to go to school, I was actually studying astrophysics because the idea that using the most powerful telescopes we have, which today are telescopes up in space, not even on earth, we can see things that nobody has seen except God. We can literally lay eyes on things that only God has seen for millions and even billions of years. It's just absolutely fascinating. And I was planning to pursue that as a career when I needed a breadth requirement. And I took a class on climate change. And up until then, I had, you know, I knew it was real and I knew it was something environmentalists cared about and I figured environmentalists would fix it, right? That's their job. And the rest of us can support them and watch their documentaries and maybe donate to them too or buy a tree to plant. But when I took that class, that was where I learned, first of all, that climate change is not just a future issue. It's already affecting us today. Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is also a profoundly human issue. It is taking issues like poverty and hunger, disease, lack of access to clean water or even a safe place to live and it's actively making them worse. So we can't fix anything that's wrong with the world. If we don't patch the hole in the bucket, so to speak, which is climate change, and even worse, the people who are most impacted by it are the people who've done the least to cause it in the first place. So the profound injustice of climate change was what spoke to me as a believer. It isn't about the verses in the Bible for me that talk about God's love and care for creation, although those are very valuable perspectives for us to share. But the verses that were Jesus told us disciples that we are to be recognized by our love for others. How can we be recognized for that if we fail to address this global issue that we in rich countries have primarily caused that is primarily affecting those in poor countries who didn't cause it? So to me, my faith is central to what I do and I truly believe that in not only studying what we're doing to this home that God's given us, but sharing that information with others to help prevent suffering as much as possible, for me, that's walking in the good works that God has prepared for me in advance. Well, you've just given a very compelling and succinct summary of your message to, well, all audiences, but in particular to evangelical Christians who share the same spiritual identity as you. So that's the message. What's been the reaction? Well, for me, like I said, growing up in Canada and in Colombia, I had never heard that Christians shouldn't care about climate change. I didn't even know that that was a thing until I decided to go to graduate school in the States. It was Adela Noy that I first met people at the church I went to, the e-free church I attended, who when they asked me what I was studying and I told them what I was studying said, "Oh, is that even real?" and I was pretty surprised because at that point, we've been studying as scientists, we've been studying this since the 1850s and we already have tens of thousands of lines of evidence from literally from the peach tree blooming in your black yard to the glaciers melting on the highest mountains in the world that, you know, yes, this thing really is real. And so I grew to realize that as I was studying this, it was actually happening in real life. That increasingly, as politics and religion have become intertwined in the United States, just as Mark Noll talks about in his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And I know you've read it Curtis, but if anybody listening has not read it, I highly, highly recommend it. It explains so much about the US. As it explains, political ideology and theology in the US have become so intertwined that for many people now, their statement of faith is sadly written by their ideology. And if the two come into conflict, they will go with political ideology over their theology. And so today, conservative political ideology in the US says climate isn't changing. Humans aren't responsible. The impacts aren't serious and we don't want to fix it. And this last one is key because all the objections stem from the last one. Destination climate change does require addressing the structures of power and wealth in this world that want us to continue to be dependent on fossil fuels, even though the air pollution alone from burning fossil fuels kills millions of people a year. But the profits keep rolling in. And so that's where this conflict has come about. And I didn't even, I wasn't even aware it existed until I moved to the States, but now, I mean, sadly enough, I get messages, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of messages a day from people who identify as Christian, yet they're calling me terrible names. They're saying that none of this is true. It's just a lie. We need to keep on burning fossil fuels as long as possible. And they're not getting any of that from the Bible. They're getting it directly, or they've been catacaiased, you could even say, directly by conservative new sources. So I think it's, I'm been curious of what is the actual percentage of evangelicals as a subset and Christians as a total set actually hold this oppositional view because it's easy. And I think the reason that's as important is if you think your tribe should hold a certain view, and especially like you said, when it becomes a political tribe, then you're not really studying or even, you know, sort of processing the science or even trusting the science. You're just going with your identity, right? Your political/spiritual identity that unfortunately has gotten merged in the way you said it. But I think it'd be helpful if people hear, hey, not all Christians believe this. I don't have to give up my identity in order to be open to the message of climate change. So do we know what the distribution of views are among Christians? Well, Curtis, you just said so many nails on the head. So, yes, and the Yale program on climate change communication, they do a lot of polling in research. And so not only do they have data on what people think about climate change, but they've shown that one of the most important things we need to know, all of us, Christian or not, is that others care, especially others like us. So it turns out that they just did a big survey around the world last year asking people of all nations, races, religions or not about climate change. And what they found is that almost everyone they talked to around the entire world cared about this issue, but didn't think anybody else cared about it. I think the number they came up globally with was 89% of people around the world are worried about this issue, but most of them think nobody else is. And what they found is, if I'm worried, but nobody else is, then I feel like, well, what's the point? I can't, you know, who am I to change a global issue? I mean, I can't stop the wildfires in Canada or the hurricanes down in the Gulf. So we think there's no point. So often originally people thought, you know, way back a couple of decades ago, before social science was brought into this whole discussion, in our naivete, we scientists thought, oh, just tell people the information and then they'll do the right thing. But what we now know is we could be fully worried about this issue. And in fact, in the US, two thirds of people are worried, but if we don't know what to do, we'll do nothing. And in the US, 92% of people don't know what to do. That's a crazy percentage. So, you know, you mentioned that you subscribed to my newsletter, Talking Climate. And Talking Climate is specifically designed to not have doom and gloom conversations about starving polar bears or melting ice sheets. I have good news about solutions that are happening. I have not so good news about how we're being personally affected in ways that, you know, our insurance costs for fertility rates, you know, how our kids' sports are being affected. And then I have something that we can do. So speaking of Christians in the US, what we see is that there are some very sharp gradients when we look at the data. If you look at Christians overall, all types of Christians all across the US, we're probably just a little bit below the national average, which is, you know, about two thirds, we're just a little bit below that. But if you break us out, there's huge differences. So the most concerned Christians in the US are Hispanic Catholics. They're very concerned about climate change. And you might say, well, of course, the late Pope Francis was a great advocate for climate action. He wrote and spoke extensively on it. Pope Leo is actually picked that up. And he also is doing that. In fact, he just had a 10-year anniversary of Lodato C, the initial encyclical that Pope Francis wrote. So you might say, oh, well, that's because of the Pope's. Well, it turns out that white Catholics are right at the bottom of the list of the people who care most. And I'm very sorry to say that many white evangelical Protestants are right there with them too. But even within those groups, and then I would say that black churches, Latino churches, and mainline churches are in the middle between, even within those groups. So there's very sharp age differences. The younger people are, the more likely they're at a car. And in fact, I mean, you know more about this than I do. But one of the biggest reasons why young people are leaving the church is because they don't see that the church reflects a Christian perspective on the things they care about. And it's very easy, as we've already talked about, to have a Christian perspective on why we need climate action. In fact, I think if we took the Bible seriously, we'd be at the front of the line demanding climate action. And outside the U.S., and even inside the U.S., many people, many Christians, aren't the front of the line. But we just often don't hear their stories and don't hear their voices. So it's really fascinating when we look at the, at the sort of breakdown of who cares and who doesn't. But the bottom line is, as you said, a lot of Christians do care. There are many Christian groups in the United States from the evangelical environmental network to Arrasha, which is a Christian conservation organization. There's tear fund, which does relief in development and low-income countries with a strong climate lens. The compassion international world vision also looks at climate-related impacts, especially in the poorest and most vulnerable. There's so many great organizations, and there's so many people who care about this. And so we are not alone. We are part of a group that is growing. Yeah. Well, I want to underline that. I certainly observe that among the young in the next generation, because this is the earth they're going to inherit and inhabit. And so they really do care about it. And there is much more work happening, even organized work than people realize. We'll include in our show notes the links to some of the organizations you mentioned. I do want to double underline your point about how important it is for us to realize that we are not alone. I came across a really interesting survey published by the National Academy of Science. And from 2023 to 2024, they interviewed 1,600 religious leaders, including pastors of fundamentalists and evangelical churches. Here's the sort of totally amazing finding to me was that the study found that 90% of these church leaders, which again include conservative evangelical pastors believed in human cause damage to the climate, and that's real. But the key point is only about half of those church leaders ever shared their belief with their congregation, like only half, right? And so that has this effect on the congregation thinking, well, you know, this is not a real issue. This is not what Christians care about. But the study also found that once the congregation found out about their leader's view, there was a real shift in their beliefs. And so, you know, it just speaks to something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is that, and I've already said that identity precedes belief. We are not people who accept scientists. The average layperson is not like, okay, give me all the data. I'll sort through it and I'll come up with my independent objective view. No, we take our cues from, you know, the people around us who we identify with is like our community, our tribe. You know, and so this is why it's so helpful that you are showing why the Christian identity is congruent with a care for the planet in this way. Are there other ways that this identity shift can happen? We talked about leaders doing that. We talked about recognizing those organizations out there. Have you come up with other strategies or ways that we can sort of foster this identity shift? Absolutely. And the key catalyst there, and I love that you cited that study because it's such a powerful study, 90% of Christian leaders in the United States, yet they're not talking about it. And the same is happening across the whole U.S., two thirds of people are worried, yet, you know, only 30% talk about it even once in a blue moon, and you look around the entire world and you see the same pattern. So what's the connection between what I think and what other people think? We actually have to have a conversation about it, right? I mean, talking about like you and I are or sharing with somebody or posting something on social media or writing something or sending somebody something and saying, "Hey, check this out. If we don't communicate about it, we aren't going to understand that others care. There is hope and there are solutions and we can make a difference." So nowadays, you know, people always ask me, "What should I do?" And they expect me to say, you know, recycle or eat plant-based burgers, again, the V or solar panels on your roof or something like that. And don't get me wrong. Those are great ways to reduce your personal contribution to climate change, except recycling that just reduces waste. But those are all good things to do, but those personal actions aren't enough. It's like, imagine if we lived inside our house and we practiced godly virtues inside our house and we made sure that everybody in our house knew the gospel and we talked about it frequently. But imagine if we never had a conversation about the gospel outside our house. How would we impact the world? In the same way, with climate action, we can make all the changes we want in our personal life. But if we never actually have a conversation about it, we're never going to change the world. So it's a very radical thought, but it's a very simple thought and I think Bill McKibben put it well. And of course, is a climate advocate and activist who comes at this also from his Christian faith. He said, the most important thing an individual can do right now is not be such an individual. And that really resonated with me because as Christians, we are not called to be individuals. We are called to function within the body of Christ. We are each a different part and we need all these parts acting together like a body in order to accomplish what we're intended to in this world. And so I love that sort of picture, that metaphor of the body as applying to what we do about climate change too. And the first thing to do is to communicate with each other, which is what we need to do. So this identity thing, how can we get people to realize that whoever they already are is the perfect person to care? Now that's actually the first step is actually correctly stating the goal because all too often we think we have to change who they are. If we come at somebody wanting to change who they are, we all of us have our radar up, right? Our antenna up. And we know if somebody is judging us, we know if somebody thinks that who we are is bad or inadequate and needs to be better. And most of us don't want to hear that. So we have to start with the attitude of not of you are bad. I am judging you. I can't believe you did XYZ and I'm going to show you why you're wrong. We have to start with a love and grace-filled attitude of you are a child of God with just the same value as I have in God's eyes. And you have, if this person is a fellow believer, we believe they have a new heart, a God-given heart. We believe the Holy Spirit speaks to them and guides them. And we know that they have unique abilities, talents, and interests that God has given them. So if we approach the conversation, not from you are bad or wrong and I need to change you, but who are you? What are you already passionate about? What are you already interested in? What sort of lights you up? What passions do you have? And then I think of this as the head-to-heart gap, figure out their heart, and then connect this issue to what they already care about. Are they passionate about kids' ministry or their family? Do they care about the poor? Do they are they an avid gardener? Whatever it is, you can make these connections and that's part of what I do in talking climate as I try to provide a new connection every week. And in my book "Saving Us," I talk about how I've even made connections over the faculty both knit or we both share a love of beach vacations or they were both parents. We both love winter sports and you need snow for that. So we have to make that connection over something they already care about. And if we don't know what they already care about, we should be developing a relationship with them, not you know trying to bring out scientific information and hit them upside ahead with it. So that's step one, but then step two is a lot of people don't talk about this issue because it's so depressing. It is full on depressing. If you do it at all the news and how bad it's getting and how much worse it could get, it just makes you want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head. And so that's why my favorite verse, when it comes to talking about climate change, is in Timothy where Paul is writing to Timothy and he says, "God has not given us a spirit of fear." So if our conversations are inducing fear, that's not the spirit God gave us. It goes on to say what God has given us is first of all a spirit of power, which is kind of an old fashioned way I think of saying empowered. So what does fear do? It paralyzes you. What does being empowered do? It helps you act. So God has literally given us the ability to act and then also with a spirit of love, which means we're thinking of others more than ourselves and with a sound mind to make good decisions using the information he's given us, much of it through science. So that's why I always recommend bringing in solutions to, like, here's what my family did. You could try it too. Here's what a different church did, maybe our church could try that too. Here's what a different Bible study group did, maybe we could do this too. Here's what a different school or place of work has done. And even sometimes it's just encouraging to say, "Hey, we hear a lot about what's happening at the global scale, but did you know that we've been building more renewable energy than fossil fuels for over 10 years now?" And people are like, "Whoa, I had no idea about that." Did you know that there are seven countries that are almost 100% clean energy now? And people are like, "Whoa, I had no idea about that." So even those global things help, as well as the very granular local things, they make such a difference. And people leave those conversations, not feeling overwhelmed with fear, but rather feeling empowered, feeling that they're able to express God's love that's been poured out in our hearts, to others, and feeling like they can use the sound mind that God has given us to make good decisions. Katherine, I love what you're saying. This is very much stuff we've tried to communicate in having conversations about political polarization in our work. Just to underline some really great points you made, like we can't approach people with a judging spirit or some kind of requirement that they change their identity, or even in a wholesale way, immediately change big parts of their lifestyle. I love what you said about how we want to communicate things that don't just stoke greater fear, but actually empowerment. That's all great. But I'm imagining a conversation happening between somebody who does believe in the long-term trends that are concerning happening to the planet, and somebody who doesn't, like their uncle or their cousin or something like that. It seems to me all those steps you take are great advice, but at some point in the conversation comes the issue, wait, is this even real, like is indeed climate change happening? So working on the premise that like just fact checking them with a bunch of different studies may not like do the trick. I'll just say will not do the trick, but we'll not do the trick, right? We'll not do the trick. What are the simplest, most clear observations about what they can see, most people can see that should kind of prompt, huh, why is that happening? Maybe I should be concerned about it. What are the things that people can point to? Well, I'll answer your question on the first level, but then there's a deeper level to that question too. So on the surface level, 15 or 20 years ago, we would have to live up in the Arctic or maybe on a very low-line coastal area to actually have seen with our own eyes changes that were happening in our world. But today doesn't matter where you live. You can see the changes wherever you are. So I'm Canadian, and never in my entire life have seen the air over the city where I grew up choked with orange wildfire smoke, yet now that happens multiple times a year. People who live along the ocean know that they can see sea level creeping up, and in many cases, like in Miami, they have sunny day flooding that's so bad that they've had to raise the level of the streets in Miami Beach by two feet and install pumps. We know that we've always had heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and more, but we know that they're getting stronger. Hurricanes are intensifying faster. They're dumping more rain. Extreme heatwaves are becoming even more extreme and more common. Heavy rainfall, events, and flooding, we'll just look at your news. There's a new one around the world every week. So the way I think about it is, it's like we have these two dice, these weather dice, and wherever we live, we have a chance of rolling a double-six naturally, that's just weather. But as the world warms decade by decade, it's like it's sinking in and taking another one of those numbers and putting another six on the dice, and then another, and then even a seven. And all of a sudden we're rolling the dice, so to speak, it's like, "Hey, we have another set of double-sixes. We just had one last week, what's this about?" So a number of years ago, I was standing in line at church, waiting to pick up my son from Sunday School. Sunday School was going a bit long, the service had already ended. And the man in front of me said, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" And I said, "Well, sure. I mean, we're not going anywhere." And he said, "Do you feel like the weather is getting weirder?" And I thought about it. I thought, "Well, heatwaves are getting stronger, more frequent, heavy rainfall is getting more intense, storms are getting stronger, faster. We're seeing a lot more wildfires, especially at West." So I said, "Yeah, I think that's a great way to explain it." He said, "I know it." He said, "I've lived here for 30 years and I could tell something was different." So now, often, I don't ask people if they, first of all, I actually never ask people if they believe in climate change, because when people ask, "If I believe in ice, I actually say no. I don't believe in it. Faith is the evidence of what we do not see." Hebrew says, "But science is the evidence of what we do see." And so I look at the data and the data says, "Yeah, it's real. It's us. We've checked. It's not volcanoes. It's not the sun. It's not natural cycles." According to those factors, we should be getting cooler, not warmer. And it really is serious, it's affecting us. So now when I ask people, "Is the weather getting weirder?" Everybody, I've ever asked that, says, "Yes, everybody." Because you take away the hot button words of climate change, they've gotten so politically polarized and just say, "It's the weather weirder," and everybody has stories about it. And then bring in the solutions of what we can do to make sure that we're safe for our community, safe for our insurance rates, don't aren't going through the roof. Our kids are okay. Those are the types of condos we can have. But, so here's, that's the first layer. Here's the second layer, though. The second layer is, when it comes to climate change, we're not just black and white. We're not just like, "Yes, I believe in it, no, I don't." We actually follow along a spectrum, and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has dubbed this the "six Americas of global warming." The two biggest groups are people who are alarmed and concerned. But often people who are alarmed and concerned still don't understand how it's affecting the things they care about and they really don't know what to do about it. So, if people are alarmed and concerned, really focusing on how it's affecting things that we care about, like I talked about, and what we could do together is really important. Then there's people who are cautious, and they often lead with their doubts. But they're leading with the doubts because they want answers to the questions, and then once you answer the questions, then they're willing to move on to what we can do about it. So, if they really have genuine questions, they're not arguing or fighting, but they just have questions. There's amazing resources, like skeptical science, which is created by John Cook, another fellow believer who created it to answer all his dad's questions about climate change. I have little videos called Global Weirding that answer a lot of questions too, and on my website I have even more resources. But then there's a small number who are disengaged, again for them, talking about what they already care about and helping them make that connection is important. And then at the end, 12% of Americans are doubtful, and about 11% are dismissive. Now, how do you recognize the doubtful and dismissive? They are typically highly political, more likely to be men than women, more likely to be older than younger, and they love to bring it up. They're always posting on Facebook, "Oh, there's more polar bears now than there ever were, so much for climate change," or "Oh, they just had that big climate conference in Brazil, all those people flying their private jets there as if they really care about anything." So, people who are dismissive, my definition of a dismissive is, "If an angel from God with tablets of stones and global warming is real appeared before them, they would dismiss the angel." Who am I to change their mind? I honestly believe it takes a miracle. I think I might have seen one or two miracles in my time, one or two in thousands of conversations, and I attribute those 100% to the Holy Spirit and zero percent to me. So, if someone's dismissive, the best thing to do, and unfortunately, they're 11% nationally but higher in the church, "I love you, I'm sorry you're wrong, but now let's talk about something else. Let's talk about something else." And here's the fascinating thing, though. Sometimes when that something else ends up being a solution to climate change, like John's debt. So, John created this whole website of answers to common questions that for people who are cautious or very helpful, John's dad was not cautious. John's dad was doubtful. So, none of that changed his mind. So, then, John went back to school and got a PhD in cognitive psychology. I'm not kidding you. And he became a global expert in misinformation, disinformation, climate myths. He has this great series called Cranky Uncle, he has this great cartoon book with common answers to common questions. None of that changed his dad's mind. But, in addition to being a Christian, his dad was also very independent and very fiscally conservative and thrifty. So, there was a rebate on solar panels in the rural area where his dad lived in Australia. So, John heard about that, and he thought, "Maybe his dad would like it, not for climate change, but because he'd be more independent, more thrifty." So, he gave his dad this info. His dad was like, "Oh, okay, that makes sense. I'm already thrifty." Well, I mean, obviously this was a subconscious reasoning, but I'm already very thrifty, I want to be more thrifty. I already like to be independent. I'll be more independent. Oh, I get to stick it to that foolish government also who's offering these ridiculous rebates. I might as well take them, right? They're detaining the cash away with the shovel. So, he signed that, he got his solar panels. And then, pretty soon, every month, John was getting an email from his dad about how much money he'd saved. So, these solar panels made his dad an even better version of who he already was. And then, about two years later, John was having dinner again with his dad, and his dad said, "Oh, global warming. That is such a serious issue, and I've always thought so," and John said, he almost fell off his chair. And his dad continued, "And how have I told you how much money I'm saving with my solar panels?" The root issue that causes people to reject the reality of this has nothing to do with science, has nothing to do with education. It has nothing to do with intelligence. In fact, the smarter people are, the better they are to think about what about arguments. They've been told that the solutions are communist, or they'll take away their freedom. You can't eat this. You can't do this. You have this. And so, no wonder they don't want to say this is real, because they think all the solutions are bad. But when we see ourselves in the solutions, and we see solutions that give people more food and water who need it to our hungry, who improve people's health, who are currently suffering, who give people safe replaces to live, who help us share the love of God with others, then often are objections to the issue of evaporate. So leading with the solutions rather than the impacts, the further people are down the Six America scale is essential, until you get to dismissive, at that point, I highly recommend I love you. You're wrong, but let's talk about something else. That's great advice. And I want to just commend to our listeners to go and sign up for Katherine's newsletter, because it is, I mean, one of the things that struck me was how you do populate almost every, you know, mailing that you do, emailing with solutions, with some hope, also with some warnings, but it's, you know, you can find the hope, you can find the solutions. And I think that you're absolutely right, that's a great approach. In addition to what you mentioned, John Cook's website and your website/newsletter, are there any other helpful sources of information that you would recommend to listeners? Oh, yeah. In fact, on my own website, which is just my name, Katherinehaio.com, I've curated all kinds of resources. I have answers to about 25 very calm, and they ask questions people have. And I've done my best to provide all those resources. So for example, people often ask, you know, what Christian groups could I be part of? I've got a list of those there. They ask, what science resources could I look at to understand this better? I have resources there. They ask, oh, what can my church do about climate change? I've got a whole page of resources there. And people often ask, how do I have conversations with people? And so the six Americans I talked about are there and sort of a more in-depth discussion of how to have these conversations and when not to have the conversations also. And what you can do to make a difference. All right. That's great. We have been talking to Katherinehaio, a leading scientist studying what's happening to our planet and also a committed Christian who has so much biblical wisdom to share. All right. We just take a break and we'll be back right after this. Listeners, I want to take a minute to talk to you about sharing and discussing these good faith conversations. We always love your ratings and reviews. They really do help us share our content and others find the show. But even more than that, we hope you'll share good faith episodes with you. Your friends and family. And then talk about them together. Ask questions, wrestle with ideas, and keep the dialogue going. That's what good faith is all about, making sense of the world beyond the podcast. We're back talking with Katherinehaio and we've been having a wide-raising and insightful conversation around what we can do to address and care for our planet. Katherine, I want to ask you to play devil's advocate for a moment because you are used to talking with a lot of folks across those six Americas, that wide range of view, including the doubtful and dismissive, like you said. One thing we'd like to do periodically on this podcast when we talk about polarized issues is can we adopt the other person's view and be able to articulate, even though we might disagree with it, can we at least understand what they're saying? So I'm going to ask you to do that role and play devil's advocate in all of your conversations with us. What's been the best counter argument that you've encountered? Okay. Well, there are five categories of arguments people use to dismiss climate change. First of all, they say it's not real. And the answer to that is, well, not only all of the thermometer records around the world and all of the satellite records and all of the ocean boy records, they all show warming, but you know, we can just toss those out the window. Let's just look at what God's creation is telling us. There are over 26,000 independent lines of evidence from melting glaciers to insects migrating earlier in the year, to plants flowering at different times, showing us that the planet is indeed warming. Then the next objection is, oh, but it might be warming, but it's just a natural cycle, or volcanoes or the sun. Scientists have looked at all of those factors. And what we see is that according to natural factors right now, the planet should be getting very, very slowly gradually cooler, and instead it's warming faster and faster. The only thing that could be causing warming right now is us, specifically, because you might say, well, how is it by us existing? Is it by us breathing? No. The way that we're warming the planet is by the fact that we are digging up and burning more and more coal and gas and oil. We started doing that at scale back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and we have increased our demand for energy exponentially. Why does this matter? It matters because when we burn coal and gas and oil, what people call fossil fuels, it produces heat trapping gases that are building up in the atmosphere, wrapping an extra blanket around the planet. And just as you would, if somebody snuck in at night and put an extra blanket on you, you wake up sweating. Hey, I'm too warm. I didn't need this blanket. That's what's happening to our planet. 75% is coming from burning coal, gas and oil, to heat our homes, to power our cars, to drive industry. And 25% is coming from agriculture, deforestation, and unsustainable land use. So then they say, okay, fine, maybe climate is changing and humans are responsible, but it's not that bad. I mean, isn't warmer better? And I have to say, I have said that to myself on a cold day when I'm scraping the ice off the car, and I forgot my mitts, but in general, no. So over the course of human history on this planet, the planet's temperature has been as stable as that of the human body. So over the course of a day, our body temperature goes up and down by a few tenths of a degree. That's normal. Over the course of human civilization on this planet, the average temperature of the planet has gone up and down by no more than a few tenths of a degree. Now it's gone up by over two degrees Fahrenheit, 1.3 degrees Celsius. So imagine your body if you're running a two degree Fahrenheit fever. You feel achy, you're taking some Tylenol, you're wondering who breathed on you, you might take a COVID test, you could be heading to the doctor. That's where our planet is today. It is bad because we are perfectly adapted for the conditions of the past, not the future. And today, climate is changing faster than any time in human history. It's the speed that's getting us. So then people say, okay, it's real, it's us, it's serious. But we can't fix it. I mean, those solutions are just too expensive. It's just better just to let it rip, right? And we'll just deal with it later. Well, a study from Oxford University two years ago found that the faster we switched to clean energy, the better off we'll be. They said by 2050, if we can go 100% clean energy by 2050, we will save 12 trillion dollars. And if we do it sooner, we'll save more money. Now, there will be some winners and losers. The losers will be the richest industries in the world. The fossil fuel industry is currently subsidized to the tune of almost a thousand US dollars per person per year. That is the subsidy to the organizations that have made the largest record-breaking profits they've ever made in just the last year or two. We are subsidizing them. Some of them through direct government subsidies, some of them through the way that they're allowed to use public land without paying for it or cleaning up after it, and some of it through the climate damages that they're causing but not paying for. So there's no question that addressing climate change will improve our health. I mentioned that millions of people die every year from the air pollution from fossil fuels alone. And that's not even talking about the health impacts of extreme weather disasters and more. It'll improve our health. It'll give us healthier food systems. We currently waste almost half the food we produce and it produces heat trapping gases. We are losing billions of dollars of crops every year already due to climate change. So we'll get more food, we'll get more abundant in cleaner water, we'll get safer and more affordable communities, we'll get a better world, and we'll fix climate change too. So then the last thing that people say, after they say, okay, fine, it's real, it's us, it's serious. I guess there are ways we can fix it that make our lives better not worse, but it's too late. The cake is baked, the goose is cooked. And to that I say, the science says every bit of warming we avoid matters. It's like we've been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for years. We have some spots in our lungs, we're not going to win the Olympics anymore. But we don't have emphysema, we don't have lung cancer, and we're not dead yet. We win as the best time to stop smoking today, how much as soon as possible, as much as possible. We know in the science says that every bit of warming we avoid matters. And why is that warming matter because it causes suffering? It causes suffering to God's creation and to God's people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. So we have solid answers to all of these, but again, there's always two layers to the question. The second layer to the question is, why do people use these arguments? They use the arguments because they fundamentally believe because they've been told that the solutions to climate change are worse than the impacts. They've been told you can't be a Christian, you can't be a Republican, or you can't just be a normal person if we take these actions. And so that's why if I have any time, and somebody that says, for example, somebody could say, how do we know it's not the Sun? I could say, well, the Sun's energy has been going down over the last 50 years, not up. So according to the Sun, we should be getting cooler. And did you know that in Texas, 38% of our electricity comes from wind and solar energy? And they might say, why are you telling me that? I say, well, if we agree that it's great that these changes are happening, then that's all we have to agree on. I don't actually care if people agree with me on the science. I just want them to agree with me on the solutions. All right, Catherine, I want to wrap up here and recognize that you've given our listeners a really wide range of paths of action from advocacy to doing stuff in your own neighborhood and county and city. I love that. But I want you to try to like pull it down to what you think is one step that you would love people to consider. That kind of has a much general applicability as well. Because I think one thing you're saying is that a lot of what people do does end up being customized to what their life is like, what is their opportunities. But help us at least give a starting point to consider that would have the greatest possible applicability. And I want you to do this by talking to two audiences. So let's first talk about the Christian who is really unsure, doubtful to unsure about the future of the planet in terms of climate change. What is one step you would encourage that person to take to explore this issue with an open heart? Well, this is a very meta question, Curtis, because what I would encourage everyone to do is to just have a conversation about it to begin with. Because it's very clear, we aren't talking about it. Clergy, ministers, pastors, they're not talking about it. Members of us sitting in the congregation, we're not talking about either. How do people do anything without talking about it together? So even just the act, like let's not skip over the act of having the conversation, the act of having the conversation is an action. And that is the action I want everybody to do. So you have a lot of choices here. You can talk about something. You heard us talk about it. You can go to some of the resources we talked about and talk about something there. You can check out my talking climate newsletter and share. I would recommend starting with the good news or something you can do. Notice, don't start with the knots or good news. So having that conversation is important. And if you're talking to someone who feels like, you know, sort of, where do we find hope? Like nobody's doing anything, nobody else cares, I care, but nobody else does. How can we, you know, how am I supposed to even do anything about it? I have so many issues I already care about. I'm already taking action on. This one feels the most hopeless. So why even bother? So they are, what do people need to know? They need to know they're not alone, and they need to know there's hope. So with that person, I would share something I learned about the number of people who do care who are worried. And there's numbers about the US, there's numbers about the world, there's even numbers for your county or your congressional district if you live in the US. And we can put those links in the, in the episode notes. So sharing that others care and then sharing what someone like you or your group or your church has done already and is already doing that you could do together too is so impactful because hope results from action. And it's so interesting in Romans, one of my other favorite verses too, is Paul begins his definition of where hope comes from with suffering. And he says suffering leads to perseverance and perseverance to character and character to hope that will not disappoint because our hope is ultimately in God. It's not in a piece of legislation or a politician or, you know, the goodwill of whoever it is that we want to do whatever we want them to do. Our hope is in God and God has given us, he has not given us the spirit of fear. He has empowered us with love and a sound mind to act. So to that person who feels like nothing I do can make a difference, I would give them examples of how ordinary people, not big, rich, famous people, ordinary people have made a huge difference and they can't do. All right. What's the second category? Okay. The second category is a Christian who believes in the science, who is committed to this issue, who has been talking about, has been talking about within the family, friends and so forth. For that person, give us what you think is the best practical step, the practical action that they can take beyond the conversation. Okay. Well, first of all, I would say make sure that you are not bombarding people with grim doom and gloom facts all the time. Often, when I say we need to have a conversation, I get people saying, well, I do have a conversation and now I'm at the point where everybody stands up and leaves the room when they see me coming. I'm like, well, why is that? It's because you're overloading them with all, you know, could be perfectly true, facts, but they're incredibly depressing and they're incredibly disempowering because what am I supposed to do about a slowing ocean circulation? You know, what am I supposed to do about the wildfires in Canada, like I said, or hurricane the Gulf? There's nothing I could do about that. So first of all, if you do have the conversations already, I would encourage you to step back and take a look at what are you actually talking about? I think of this as head, heart and hands. So the head is all the information, data, facts, statistics that people often focus on, but what's really more important is the heart. What do the people you're speaking with already care about? Are you talking, you know, if Aunt Pat is a gardener, are you talking about how climate change affects her garden with her? Or are you talking about polar bears and ice sheets? So really make sure that you're focusing on the heart, what it is they already care about, and also make sure that every conversation brings in the hands. Every conversation should include something that is being done, that could be done, because action is where our hope comes from. So I would encourage people, first of all, to, you know, even if they're having those conversations, think about how you're having them and what you want to accomplish. You don't want a bunch of worried, paralyzed people. You want a bunch of encouraged, activated people. And that's a very different conversation. Yeah, but get to the hands. Like what is one thing that you would say everybody at least should consider, especially the Christian who is like committed to this issue? What should they be doing with their hands? I think that especially if you're part of a congregation, you should encourage your church to do something, anything, and then talk about it. So you don't have to, you know, there's not a one, two, three. There's a bunch of different things you can do, and on my website, I have them. So, you know, you could start a book study. You could have the pastor and minister actually give a talk about why this matters from a biblical perspective. You could bring in somebody from a Russia, evangelical, environmental network, tear fund or more to talk about their work, caring for God's people and God's creation. You could consider whether you could get solar panels on the roof and maybe offer the roof of the church to the community because as a solar garden, because it's cheaper if a bunch of people sign up to put panels on one giant roof, then if they sign up to put small groups of panels on small roofs, what about pollinator-friendly garden? What about offering a place for people to plug in their car if they bring it to church? Or even if they come from the neighborhood? What about having like a fair where you bring in all these options that people can find out about like they might have heard about heat pumps and EVs, but they don't know anything about it. So bring in people from the community to teach your church what they could do, set a goal for your church to reduce their emissions, measure the emissions first, set an emissions reduction goal. There's this great guy, Colby May, who's actually a graduate of my own university. He did a business degree, then they did an M-DIV degree at Gordon Comwell and then he decided to go into working with churches to help them save money and reduce their carbon footprint. So figure out what your footprint is first and you can do this for your family, you can do this individually too. Then set a goal to reduce it and then figure out what the most cost-effective and easy ways are for you to reduce it. But then don't stop there, talk about it. Share it with others, set a goal that if your church does this, to identify five other churches, you then go to and say, "Hey, we did this and if you'd like to try it, we could help you too." So do something anything and then talk about it. Katherine, thank you so much. I love you're such a refreshing breath of optimism, hope and a wealth of specific steps such that I ask you for one, you give me 10. So thank you so much. And we'll try to include in our show notes a lot of the resources you've mentioned to. You are a real gift to the church and to the world in this. Katherine, thank you so much for your work and thank you for coming on The Good Faith Podcast. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for what you do too. Thank you. All right. And listeners, please join us again next week when we once again gather around the campfire. Curtis Chang is the executive producer of The Good Faith Podcast. It is produced by D.T. Slothman. This episode was edited and mixed by Jim Eckis with production assistance from Katherine Carter. Beautiful anyway, performed by Judah and the lion. Amazing grace, arranged and performed by Chris Carter. D.T. Slothman serves as the director of content for Good Faith. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us on Apple Podcasts and leave a rating and review to help more people discover the show, wherever you listen to Good Faith. The Good Faith Podcast is produced by a 501(c)(3) public charity that does not engage in any political campaign activity to support or oppose any candidate for public office. Any views and opinions expressed by any guests on this podcast are solely those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Good Faith.