APRIL/MAY 2019 • CHATELAINE 73
life SOCIETY
STRING ART, AMY MARENCO.
G
azing at the Andromeda
Galaxy through binoculars
w ith my science teacher dad
is one of my earliest memo-
ries. And the more I learned about science,
the better it got. Who wouldn’t want to
know why the sky is blue, that polar bears
have black skin and translucent fur, and
how tiny amounts of heat-trapping gases
in our atmosphere serve as the thermo-
stat for the planet?
Despite my fascination with the universe
and this planet, I still thought of human-
caused climate change as a distant, far-off
issue, something that only really matters to
David Suzuki or those polar bears. It wasn’t
until I was looking for an extra credit to round
out my astronomy and physics degree at
the University of Toronto and I ended up in
a class on climate science that my perspec-
tive abruptly changed. That’s when I learned
it’s not the planet that’s most at risk, it’s us;
and the window of time to prevent serious
consequences is closing fast.
I switched fields and headed to grad
school at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign to study climate science. For
the past 20 years, I’ve been working with
cities, states and federal agencies to fig-
ure out how to prepare for the impacts of
a changing climate. And I don’t just study
climate change—I also talk about it. A lot.
In classes I teach in person at Texas Tech
University and online around the world. On
Twitter and Instagram and Reddit AMAs.
To farmers and oil-and-gas executives and
congressional staffers. On local news and the
To d a y S h o w, I’ll talk anywhere and to anyone.
But the more I talk about it, the more push-
back I get. I’m accused of lying and peddling
“UN-derived satanic deception” and a mul-
titude of other sins when I’m upfront about
what the data tells us: Climate is changing,
and humans are responsible. “Global warm-
ing is a freaky genocidal doomsday cult,” one
man tweeted at me the other day. “You lie for
money,” another posted on Facebook, “andchange the data.” I’ve been called a loony,
a fraud, a clown and a libtard.
Yet as vocal as such people are and as
much as they dominate the discussion,
they’re only a small proportion of the popu-
lation. The reality is that nearly 80 percent
of Canadians agree the planet is warming,
according to a poll conducted by the Yale
Program on Climate Change Communication.
And nearly two-thirds of the country rec-
ognizes the main reason for this warming
is due to human activity.
Our biggest problem isn’t skeptics who
perpetuate the idea that science is some-
how optional or a matter of opinion—it’s
that when it comes to supporting climate
action, the urgency just isn’t there for many
of us. “I’d like a little global warming,” we
think as we scrape the ice off our cars in
February. As for the so-called solutions,
we wonder why should we bear the brunt
of the financial impact.
The reality, though, is that climate change
is affecting us today. And it’s doing this by
taking many of the risks we already face natu-
rally—floods and storms, heat and drought—
and supersizing or exacerbating them. This
isn’t about saving the planet. The planet itself
will survive. The question is, What will hap-
pen to the rest of us who call it home?
That’s exactly why talking about climate
change is so important. If we don’t talk about
why it matters, why would we care about the
problem itself? And if we don’t talk about what
we can do to fix it, why would we take action
or expect our community, our province and
our country to do so either? As challenging, as
stressful and as painful as it might be, fixing
climate change begins by actually talking
about it. And over the years, I found a way to
do so that’s actually constructive. It begins
with why climate change matters to us.Why it’s so urgent
Across the country, climate change is already
leading to more frequent heavy rain events
and record-breaking heat waves. This pastClimate
Myths
1. IT’S BEEN WARMER
BEFORE, SO IT CAN’T
BE OUR FAULT
It’s true that the world has been
warmer before—but that was
a long time ago, before this
planet was home to more than
seven and a half billion people.
And when climate changed in
the past, it was due to natural
reasons: changes in energy from
the sun; predictable cycles in
the earth’s orbit that drive the
ice ages and the warm periods
in between; and, massive,
sustained volcanic eruptions
that cooled the planet. Scientists
have examined these “natural
suspects” and they each
have an alibi. According to the
sun and natural cycles and
even volcanoes, the earth
should be cooling right now,
not warming. But by digging
up and burning coal, gas and
oil, we’re producing massive
amounts of heat-trapping gases.
These gases are building up in
the atmosphere, wrapping an
extra blanket around the planet.
That blanket is trapping more
and more of the earth’s heat
that would otherwise escape
to space. And that’s why the
planet is running a fever.2. SCIENTISTS STILL
AREN’T SURE ABOUT
THIS WHOLE THING
First coff ee’s good for you,
and then it’s bad: It seems like
scientists are always changing
their minds. But when it comes
to climate change, that’s not
the case. The basic science that
explains climate change has been
well understood since the 1850s.
It’s been more than 50 years
since U.S. scientists fi rst formally
warned a U.S. president of the
dangers of climate change. Today,
eight scientifi c organizations
in Canada, including the
Canadian Geophysical Union
and the Royal Society of Canada,
have issued offi cial statements
on climate change. So why
do we see people in the news
downplaying these facts and
calling into question more than
a hundred years of science?
These are deliberate attempts
to muddy the waters in order to
delay and prevent climate action.Even though the urgency of climate change is fast becoming
unmistakable, the topic is often met with indifference,
denial or outright anger. As a climate scientist, I’ve been
called everything from a charlatan to the handmaiden of
the Antichrist. Here’s how I handle the tough conversations
By KATHARINE HAYHOE