For our final project, the three of us (Max Adelman, Scott Rothschild, and Vito Smolyak) decided to do a podcast on the causes, impacts, and solutions of anthropogenic climate change. We chose this topic due to our mutual interest in the material and the breadth of information available. We determined that a podcast format would be ideal for this topic, because this format provides an effective means of covering broad topics and switching easily between them. Furthermore, they are a form of media that is enjoyed by people of all ages, which will help in the dispersal of the information.
This project is designed to be enjoyed both by people unfamiliar with the material and those who already have a keen understanding of climate change. The podcast follows a fairly structured format which begins with a brief introduction followed by a broad overview of climate change, the available evidence of climate change, the causes of climate change, the parties who are most responsible, social inequality and conflict that arise as a result of climate change, impacts both now and in the future, and solutions and policy changes. We cover a lot of material in the podcast, which spans approximately one hour, and try to find a balance between analysis, statistics, and our own personal thoughts on the issue. The result is a digestible and thorough examination of climate change that is not so complex that a layperson would be unable to understand it and not so simple that someone familiar with the problem would become uninterested. Our goal in this project was to appeal to a wide-ranging audience with thorough science, detailed explanations, and personal anecdotes.
The initial motivation for this project stemmed around the lack of consensus on climate change in the American and global public. While the American public may not be entirely convinced of the threat, it was certainly the most prescient issue throughout our class (with global warming consistently taking the number one spot as the greatest hazard in our weekly polls at the end of class). It is true that seven out of ten Americans understand that the climate is changing, but only six out of then believe that humans are the cause of this; furthermore, while it is true that a majority of Americans may be broadly concerned about global warming, many see it as a threat will only be a factor in the future.[i] Roughly half of the population believes that climate change is currently harming Americans. While it is true that many people in the United States do believe in climate change, most do not rank it as a top concern and the issue remains incredibly divisive, particularly along party lines. Another issue is that while this is a threat that impacts every American and global citizen, many view it as a problem to push onto others rather than to address themselves. Unfortunately, only one in ten Americans has contacted a government official about climate change in the last calendar year and less than half discuss the issue with family and friends.[ii] We address this problem and many others in an attempt to convince the naysayers and better inform the believers about the troubles to come and those we are currently experiencing. Our overarching aim with this podcast was to make a convincing case that climate change is real and the result of humans for those listeners who may be on the fence or deniers of the issue. If we could do that with just one listener, then we would consider our work to be a success.
As touched on briefly earlier, our reasoning with this project was to examine a prescient threat from start to finish or, in other words, from causes to solutions. We attempted to leave no stone unturned during the podcast by providing an overview, causes, evidence, impacts, and policy and societal changes that could help alleviate climate change. In addition to general summaries of the subtopics, we also go into great detail about the specifics of the problem and often discuss statistics and scholarly publications. We also actively encourage our listeners to go out and do their own research as well, rather than just blindly trusting our information. In accumulating information from a variety of sources, we hope that our listeners will fully comprehend the gravity of the threat and its immediacy.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of this project was that it allowed us to draw on a great deal of information from throughout the class. We focused specifically on material from three separate weeks: environment devastation, social inequality and conflict, and policy responses to existential threats. In thinking about all of these topics, we reflected both upon our own memos as well as the guest speakers that joined us in class.
In regard to global warming, the class material made us recognize the importance of making certain distinctions in our initial overview, namely discussing the difference between weather and climate. Overall, we concluded that the Bill McKibben article (which noted that “June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average.”) conflated weather and climate.[iii] Furthermore, the fear-inducing article felt like the continuation of a troublesome trend of alarmist journalism that has led to widespread climate apathy. In our research, we found that climate change apathy is arguably a bigger problem than climate change denial. The result of decades of doomsday climate predictions is an adult population in the United States that seems to have either lost interest or resigned themselves to the inevitability of this threat. The readings for the environmental devastation class also focused heavily on the IPCC readings, which we discuss periodically throughout the podcast. The Summary for Policy Makers section was particularly useful and helped to inform our thinking in a variety of our subtopics.[iv]
In our section on the impacts of climate change, our readings from the course allowed us to delve deeply into the social inequality and conflict that can occur as a result of climate change. This threat is one that certainly does not and will not impact the world equally. For issues from increasingly severe storms and weather events to decreasing food security, the issues that arise from climate change will undoubtably impact poor and developing nations disproportionately. Furthermore, the severe impacts will ultimately be caused by wealthy, industrial nations that burned fossil fuels to create a high standard of living for their citizens. In this section, we found Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain’s article, “Global Warming in an Unequal World: a case of environmental colonialism,” to be particularly salient. The two authors sum up the issue quite well: “The entire debate on the prospects of impending doom is in many ways an excellent opportunity for the world to truly realize the concept of one world. A world which is interdependent and which cannot withstand the current levels of consumption and exploitation, especially the levels now prevalent in the West.”[v] This article was a great help to us in our discussions on inequality and social conflict as they relate to climate change.
Finally, in our section on policy changes and solutions, we drew information from our week discussing policy responses to existential threats. Although the readings from this week focused broadly on the nuclear threat, we applied the lessons we learned to the climate threat. A quote from one of Jerry Brown’s articles that discussed William Perry stood out to us: “there could be no acceptable defense against a mass nuclear attack, an opinion from which he has never deviated.”[vi] We felt very similarly to the climate threat. At some point, if we have not gotten there already, the human species will reach a point of no return at which no meaningful defense against climate change could be mounted. In this scenario, humanity will have crossed the event horizon of the climate crisis, at which point nothing could realistically be done to stop the changes to the climate. Our focus in the solutions section was to do what Bill Perry and Jerry Brown envisioned: making proactive rather than reactive decisions. In this section, we focus on policy changes that could be made at a federal level to proactively reduce the impact of the climate crisis.
Overall, we found the class readings and thoughts from the guest speakers to be particularly helpful. These readings and discussions helped to inform our thinking throughout this final project. However, we also drew from a variety of other sources that dealt with sections of the podcast that were necessary to include (included below).[vii][viii][ix][x][xi][xii][xiii] One of our broad goals with this project was to address the climate issue in an informed but not overly-alarming way. The result is a well-researched and informative podcast that will keep informed listeners engaged and hopefully convert a few non-believers as well.
[i] “Americans On Climate Change.” Climate Chat. Accessed June 3, 2021. https://www.theclimatechat.org/americans-on-climate-change.
[ii] Americans on Climate Change
[iii] McKibben, Bill. “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, June 25, 2018. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/.
[iv] “AR5 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2014.” IPCC. Accessed June 3, 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/.
[v] Agarwal, Anil, and Sunita Narain. “Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism (Selected Excerpts).” Handbook of Climate Change and India, 2012, 105–12. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203153284-16.
[vi] Brown, Jerry. “A Stark Nuclear Warning: by Jerry Brown.” The New York Review of Books, July 18, 2020. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/07/14/a-stark-nuclear-warning/.
[vii] “Overview: Weather, Global Warming and Climate Change.” NASA. NASA, January 28, 2021. https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming-vs-climate-change/.
[viii] “Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?” NASA. NASA, May 10, 2021. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.
[ix] “The Causes of Climate Change.” NASA. NASA, May 10, 2021. https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/.
[x] Islam , Nazrul, and John Winkel. “Climate Change and Social Inequality .” Department of Economic and Social Affairs, October 2017.
[xi] “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” IPCC. Accessed June 3, 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/.
[xii] “Understand.” GlobalChange.gov. Accessed June 3, 2021. https://www.globalchange.gov/climate-change.
[xiii] Vicedo-Cabrera, A. M., N. Scovronick, F. Sera, D. Royé, R. Schneider, A. Tobias, C. Astrom, et al. “The Burden of Heat-Related Mortality Attributable to Recent Human-Induced Climate Change.” Nature News. Nature Publishing Group, May 31, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01058-x.