SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Kate Marvel, the climate scientist who has testified before Congress and been lead author of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, begins her new book with a confession.
(Reading) I need to declare a conflict of interest regarding Earth - everyone I love lives here.
She then does what some might deem unscientific. She explores climate change through nine emotions. They include anger, fear and hope for the human future in a world beset by more heat, storms and uncertainty.
Kate Marvel, author of the new book "Human Nature," joins us in our studios. Thanks so much for being with us.
KATE MARVEL: Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
SIMON: I feel the need to begin with the fact that you say, in your work, you have seen the world come to an end many, many times. What happens?
MARVEL: Yeah. It's an occupational hazard of being a climate scientist. We use these models, these computer climate models, which you can basically think of as digital toy planets on a computer, and you can do terrible things to these planets. You can set off a volcano. You can make the world spin backwards. You can make the world end. And we do that hundreds of times a year in the safety of these digital climate models. And so after a while, you get really used to the apocalypse. You get really used to seeing the world end because it's just ending on your screen in a model.
SIMON: But, of course, the point of your book is, it's not.
MARVEL: Yeah. It's very disturbing to see the model predictions start to come true. It's one thing to watch the world end, and it's another thing to live in a world that's changing so profoundly.
SIMON: Why did you feel it was important to bring emotion into the science?
MARVEL: You nailed it. I struggled with this so much. I thought - I felt guilty for having feelings. I felt guilty for thinking about the way that I approached my work through the lens of emotions. I had this notion that we should all be perfectly objective, neutral, scientific robots. And then it kind of dawned upon me that that's not the way to make yourself more credible because you're lying about your emotions. That's not the way to get people to trust you. And so I'm a scientist. I love data. Let's talk about how we feel about the Earth that we're studying. There's nothing that says you cannot be a scientist and also be a fully human person at the same time.
SIMON: I want to take you through some of the emotions that you present us with. And let me inevitably begin with anger. You mentioned a name that was new to me, I confess. And I know it makes you angry - Eunice Foote.
MARVEL: Yeah. Eunice Foote was essentially the discoverer of the greenhouse effect, and she discovered it way back in the 1800s.
SIMON: She was dismissed at the time?
MARVEL: Well, she was a woman, so she wasn't really paid attention to. And at the time, nobody really thought anything as crazy as, oh, human beings can change the climate of the entire Earth because we still have a hard time accepting that, right? It still seems completely wild that human activities can change everything about the entire planet.
SIMON: In your chapter on fear, I made particular note of when you wrote that your biggest fear about climate change is what it might make us do to each other.
MARVEL: Exactly. Yeah, there are so many instances in history of human societies not reacting to adversity in optimal ways. My favorite thing that I learned when I was writing this book is if you look back to early modern Europe, there's something called the Little Ice Age. And as a result, the weather, especially in Europe, got kind of wild. And if you look at history, this is the time when accusations of witchcraft really starts to surface. And if you look at what witches were being accused of, nine times out of 10, they're being accused of manipulating the weather. What you can take away from that, I think, is that human societies are so complex, and we cannot be sure that we are going to react to whatever the future throws at us with the optimal response.
SIMON: Why was it important for you to include a chapter on pride?
MARVEL: Two reasons, I think. I wanted to sort of play with the idea of pride as hubris. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. There is a lot of hubris in climate conversations, especially surrounding geoengineering. There is a increasingly vocal contingent that says, well, what we need to do is deliberately change the planet. We need to intervene to counteract the warming by deliberately cooling the planet.
SIMON: More clouds, less sunlight.
MARVEL: Blocking the sun. Being artificial volcanoes, spraying gas and dust into the stratosphere. And I think those are the definition of hubris. They might be necessary hubris, but they very much are coming from a place of human arrogance, I think.
SIMON: But let me point out, as some people undoubtedly have to you, you know, on the other hand, people take steps to protect their health to deter death and suffering that just a few decades ago would have been unthinkable. But we don't think of that as hubris. We think of it as an intelligent use of science to promote our welfare and longevity.
MARVEL: Absolutely. I mean, the way that I think about these interventions is it's kind of like having your stomach pumped. You know, you want that option to be available, but you should probably stop drinking poison in the first place.
SIMON: You do include hope.
MARVEL: I do, yeah.
SIMON: What gives you hope?
MARVEL: That's a very interesting question for a climate scientist. I'm going to dodge it, I think, by saying, I don't think I need hope because I think it's the wrong question. I think the more important thing is that we have the tools that we need to get started. We know how to stop putting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We need to generate electricity in different ways. We need to switch out transportation. We need to build more walkable cities. We need to steward our land more wisely. And so if you look at the strategies, there are so many verbs there - right? - and none of those is hope. So, sure, if you want to have hope, go for it. I have hope. Sure, why not? But that, to me, is not really the relevant question. We know what to do, so let's get started.
SIMON: Your book is appearing at what - a time at what I'll just refer to as a moment in history and our politics.
MARVEL: That's true. It is, I think, an interesting time. It's an interesting time for a book to come out that seeks to reinject climate change into a very crowded national and international conversation. I am not a politician. I'm not a policymaker. I'm not a consultant. I can't say what the optimal way forward is. I can't say what the optimal messaging strategy is. But what I can say is that we may try to put climate change aside, and it's not going to stay aside. It will keep resurfacing. And so even if we try to sideline climate change, it's not going to let us forget it. It's going to keep emerging in every aspect of our conversations, not just our politics, not just our economy, but everything that we do on this planet.
SIMON: Kate Marvel. Her new book "Human Nature: Nine Ways To Feel About Our Changing Planet." Thank you so much for being with us.
MARVEL: Thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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