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How do we get people engaged
in solving global warming?
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I'd like to start with running
two short experiments with you all.
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So your task is to notice
if you feel any difference as I speak.
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OK?
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Here we go.
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We are seeing rising
carbon dioxide levels,
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now about 410 ppms.
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To avoid the RCP 8.5 scenario,
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we need rapid decarbonization.
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The global carbon budget
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for 66 percent likelihood
to meet the two-degree target
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is approximately 800 gigatons.
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(Laughter)
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OK, now let me try something else.
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We are heading for an uninhabitable Earth:
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monster storms,
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killer floods,
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devastating wildfires,
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crazy heat waves that will cook us
under a blazing sun.
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2017 is already so unexpectedly warm,
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it's freaking out climate scientists.
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We have a three-year window
to cut emissions, three years.
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If not, we will soon live
in a boiling Earth, a hellhole.
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OK. So --
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(Applause)
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Now your task:
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how did these ways
of speaking make you feel?
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The first, detached maybe
or just confused?
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What's this guy talking about?
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The other, fearful or just numb?
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So again, the question I asked:
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how do we get people engaged
in solving global warming?
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And why don't these two ways
of communicating work?
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You see, the biggest obstacle
to dealing with climate disruptions
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lies between your ears.
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Building on a rapidly growing body
of psychology and social science,
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I spent years looking
into the five inner defenses
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that stop people from engaging.
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When people hear news about the climate
coming straight at them,
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the first defense comes up rapidly:
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distance.
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When we hear about the climate,
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we hear about something
far away in space --
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think Arctic ice, polar bears --
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far away in time -- think 2100.
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It's huge and slow-moving --
think gigatons and centuries.
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So it's not here. It's not now.
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Since it feels so far away from me,
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it seems outside my circle of influence,
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so I feel helpless about it.
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There's nothing I can do.
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In our everyday lives,
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most of us prefer to think
about nearer things,
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such as our jobs, our kids,
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how many likes we get on Facebook.
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Now, that, that's real.
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Next defense is doom.
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Climate change is usually framed
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as a looming disaster,
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bringing losses, cost and sacrifice.
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That makes us fearful.
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But after the first fear is gone,
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my brain soon wants
to avoid this topic altogether.
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After 30 years of scary
climate change communications,
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more than 80 percent of media articles
still use disaster framings,
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but people habituate to and then --
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desensitize
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to doom overuse,
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so many of us are now suffering
a kind of apocalypse fatigue,
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getting numb from too much collapse porn.
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The third defense is dissonance.
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Now, if what we know,
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that fossil fuel use
contributes to global warming,
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conflicts with what we do --
drive, fly, eat beef --
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then so-called
cognitive dissonance sets in.
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This is felt as an inner discomfort.
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We may feel like hypocrites.
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To get rid of this discomfort,
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our brain starts coming up
with justifications.
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So I can say, for instance,
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"My neighbor, he has
a much bigger car than I do."
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Or, "Changing my diet
doesn't amount to anything
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if I am the only one to do it."
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Or, I could even want
to doubt climate science itself.
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I could say, "You know,
climate is always changing."
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So these justifications
make us all feel better,
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but at the expense
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of dismissing what we know.
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Thus, behavior drives attitudes.
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My personal cognitive dissonance comes up
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when I recognize that I've been
flying from Oslo to New York
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and back to Oslo
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in order to speak about the climate.
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(Laughter)
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For 14 minutes.
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(Laughter)
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So that makes me
want to move on to denial.
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(Laughter)
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So if we keep silent,
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ignore, or ridicule facts
about climate disruptions,
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then we might find inner refuge
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from fear and guilt.
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Denial doesn't really come
from lack of intelligence or knowledge.
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No, denial is a state of mind
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in which I may be aware
of some troubling knowledge,
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but I live and act as if I don't know.
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So you could call it
a kind of double life,
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both knowing and not knowing,
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and often this is reinforced by others,
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my family or community,
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agreeing not to raise this tricky topic.
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Finally, identity.
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Alarmed climate activists
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demand that government takes action,
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either with regulation or carbon taxes.
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But consider what happens
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when people who hold
conservative values, for instance,
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hear from an activist that government
ought to expand even further.
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Particularly in rich Western democracies,
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they are then less likely
to believe that science.
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How is that?
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Well, if I hold conservative
values, for instance,
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I probably prefer big proper cars
and small government
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over tiny, tiny cars and huge government.
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And if climate science comes and then says
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government should expand further,
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then I probably
will trust that science less.
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In this way, cultural identity
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starts to override the facts.
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The values eat the facts
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and my identity trumps truth any day.
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So, after recognizing
how these five D's kill engagement,
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how can we move beyond them?
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New research shows
how we can flip these five defenses
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over into key success criteria
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for a more brain-friendly
climate communication.
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So this is where it gets really exciting
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and where we find the five S's,
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the five evidence-based solutions
for what does work.
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First, we can flip distance to social.
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We can make climate feel
near, personal and urgent
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by bringing it home,
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and we can do that
by spreading social norms
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that are positive to solutions.
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If I believe my friends or neighbors,
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you guys, will do something,
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then I will too.
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We can see, for instance,
this from rooftop solar panels.
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They are spreading from neighbor
to neighbor like a virus.
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It's contagious.
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This is the power of peer-to-peer
creating the new normal.
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Next, we can flip doom to supportive.
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Rather than backfiring frames
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such as disaster and cost,
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we can reframe climate
as being really about human health,
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for instance, with plant-based
delicious burgers,
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good for you and good for the climate.
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We can also reframe climate
as being about new tech opportunities,
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about safety and about new jobs.
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Solar jobs, for instance,
are seeing an amazing growth.
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They just passed
the three million jobs mark.
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Psychology says,
in order to create engagement,
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we should present, on balance,
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three positive or supportive framings
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for each climate threat we mention.
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Then we can flip dissonance
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to simpler actions.
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This is often called nudging.
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The idea is, by better
choice architecture,
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we can make the climate-friendly behaviors
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default and convenient.
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Let me illustrate this. Take food waste.
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Food waste at buffets goes way down
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if the plate or the box size
is reduced a little,
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because on the smaller plate it looks full
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but in the big box it looks half empty,
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so we put more in.
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So smaller plates make
a big difference for food waste.
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And there are hundreds
of smart nudges like this.
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The point is, dissonance goes down
as more behaviors are nudged.
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Then we can flip denial
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by tailoring signals
that visualize our progress.
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We can provide motivating feedback
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on how well we're doing
with our problem-solving.
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Say you improved your transport footprint
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or cut energy waste in your buildings.
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Then one app that can
share this well is called Ducky.
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The idea is, you log your actions there,
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and then you can see how well
your team or company is doing,
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so you get real-time signals.
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Finally, identity.
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We can flip identity with better stories.
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Our brain loves stories.
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So we need better stories
of where we all want to go
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and we need more stories
of the heroes and heroines
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of all stripes that are
making real change happen.
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I'm proud that my hometown of Oslo
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is now embarking on a bold journey
of electrifying all transport,
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whether cars, bikes, or buses.
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One of the people
spearheading this is Christina Bu.
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She is heading the Electric
Vehicle Association for years
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and she has been fighting every day.
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Now, the UK and France, India and China
have also announced plans
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for ending the sales of fossil cars.
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Now, that's massive.
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And in Oslo, we can see
how enthusiastic EV owners
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go and tell their electric stories
to friends and neighbors
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and bring them along.
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So we come full circle
from story back to social.
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So thousands of climate communicators
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are now starting to use these solutions
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all over the world.
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It is clear, however,
that individual solutions
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are not sufficient
to solving climate alone,
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but they do build
stronger bottom-up support
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for policies and solutions that can.
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That is why engaging people is so crucial.
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I started this talk
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with testing two ways
of communicating climate with you.
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There is another way, too,
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I'd like to share with you.
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It starts with reimagining climate itself
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as the living air.
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Climate isn't really
about some abstract, distant climate
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far, far away from us.
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It's about this air that surrounds us.
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This air, you can feel in this room, too,
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the air that moves
right now in your nostrils.
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This air is our Earth's skin.
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It's amazingly thin,
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compared to the size of the Earth
and the cosmos it shields us from,
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far thinner than the skin of an apple
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compared to its diameter.
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It may look infinite when we look up,
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but the beautiful, breathable air
is only like five to seven miles thin,
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a fragile wrapping around a massive ball.
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Inside this skin,
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we're all closely connected.
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The breath that you just took
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contained around 400,000
of the same argon atoms
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that Gandhi breathed during his lifetime.
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Inside this thin,
fluctuating, unsettled film,
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all of life is nourished,
protected and held.
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It insulates and regulates temperatures
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in a range that is just right
for water and for life as we know it,
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and mediating between
the blue ocean and black eternity,
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the clouds carry
all the billions of tons of water
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needed for the soils.
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The air fills the rivers,
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stirs the waters,
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waters the forests.
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With a global weirding of the weather,
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there are good reasons
for feeling fear and despair,
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yet we may first grieve
today's sorry state and losses
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and then turn to face the future
with sober eyes and determination.
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The new psychology of climate action
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lies in letting go, not of science,
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but of the crutches
of abstractions and doomism,
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and then choosing to tell the new stories.
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These are the stories
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of how we achieve drawdown,
the reversing of global warming.
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These are the stories of the steps we take
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as peoples, cities, companies
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and public bodies
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in caring for the air
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in spite of strong headwinds.
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These are the stories of the steps we take
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because they ground us
in what we are as humans:
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earthlings inside this living air.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)