Hope & Climate Change: A Conversation with Katharine Hayhoe

The science on climate change is clear – urgent action is required to deal with the increasing risks of a warming planet. So, what can we do? On April 27, Professor Sarah Burch spoke with climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who The New York Times called “one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change.” They answered audience questions related to climate change communications, strategies for individual and collective action, transition inequities, the role of children and youth, and so much more. They’ll also weighed in on what we’re all wondering – is there hope? Watch the full recording!

Conversation highlights:
0:10 - Opening remarks
6:45 - Start of Sarah and Katharine's discussion
12:12 - Hope and climate change
16:26 - Individual and collective climate action
29:17 - Climate change communications
39:20 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) new report findings
43:36 - Empowering youth on climate action
50:39 - Dealing with burnout
59:27 - What's missing from the climate conversation - the vision we're working towards
1:04:22 - Tackling the differences in climate challenges between the global north and south
1:13:53 - Recommendations for climate activism
1:20:30 - Connections between issues, like climate change, housing and affordability
1:27:25 - Final remarks

Links shared:
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the report Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. IC3 shares the importance and implications of the report: https://uwaterloo.ca/climate-centre/n...
• Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit shows us how activism has changed the world before and provides new grounds for political engagement in the present. Her work also talks about the difference between hope and optimism: http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/hope-in...
• The Don’t Look Up – Count Us In climate platform is a helpful resource for inspiring individual climate action: https://dontlookup.count-us-in.com/
• Katharine encourages us to think less about our footprint and more about our “climate shadow,” a concept developed by Emma Pattee: https://www.mic.com/impact/forget-you...
• FLICC is an acronym for the approaches people use to spread false information. It means: Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, and Conspiracy theories and is explained by Cranky Uncle: https://crankyuncle.com/a-history-of-...
• Talking to kids about climate change is important. Here are four resources to help adults have that conversation with the young people in their lives: 1) What we can do by The Star: https://projects.thestar.com/climate-... 2) Science Moms: https://sciencemoms.com/ 3) How to Talk to Your Kids about Climate Change by Harriet Shugarman: https://newsociety.com/books/h/how-to... 4) Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe:    • I'm only a kid, I can't do anything a...  
• What we most need is a vision of a better future! The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and tom Rivett-Carnac is an excellent read on the subject: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
• The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot can help us understand how the brain reacts when we face fear and anxiety, and underscores why it’s important to focus on the better future we're working towards to help us sustain climate action: https://us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
• Iron + Earth is a great resource to learn more about just transition in Canada’s oil and gas community: https://www.ironandearth.org/
• Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world has many hopeful examples of win-win-win solutions in low-income countries: https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books...

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The event was organized by the University of Waterloo’s Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change, Sustainability Office, and Organizational & Human Development with the intention of driving action and reigniting hope on the climate crisis.