Personal Essay: Climate Denial By Another Name

Personal Essay: Mothering In the Age of Extinction

Dr. Kate Marvel

I’ve heard it a couple times already, from a journalist, a family friend, a neighbor:  

The implication is that because I’m a climate scientist, I must be excited about this time of reduced economic activity and greenhouse emissions.  The Earth is healing, they say.  Nature is returning.  Why wouldn’t I be glad about it?  Friends, I’m definitely not happy.  I’m not even sad.  What I am, more than anything, is angry.

I’m angry at the very idea that there might be a silver lining in all this.  There is not.  Carbon dioxide is so long-lived in the atmosphere that a small decrease in emissions will not register against the overwhelming increase since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  All this suffering will not make the planet any cooler.  If the air quality is better now, if fewer people die from breathing in pollution, this is not a welcome development so much as an indictment of the way things were before.

I’m angry at the politicians for creating that status quo.  I’m angry they ignored the scientists and put their own careers or pocketbooks ahead of the survival of their citizens.  It’s infuriating to see the willful, cynical ignorance: bashing models (as if there existed any science not built on models, simple or complex) and weaponizing uncertainty.  An epidemiological model, like a model of the climate system, is a way to explore different futures and the impacts of different choices.  It’s a tool, not a crystal ball.  But at the core of all useful models lies something true: the inescapable facts that mass and energy are conserved, that a greenhouse gas traps heat, that a virus can turn a host cell into a factory for self-replication.  Misinformation, rumors, and hatred may go viral, but nothing is better at spreading than a virus itself.   Politicians are powerful, but science is real.

I’m angry at the scientists, too, or at least at the institutions that employ them.  I’m angry at a culture of precarity and fear that makes scientists timid, compliant, and reluctant to speak truth to power.  I’m angry that speaking truth to 

powerful or not, is discouraged unless it results in a publication, grant, or other resume-boosting reward.  How can scientists be listened to if we’re too frightened to raise our voices?

But more than anything else, I’m angry at the implication that “we” are at fault.  There is a bad but persistent narrative that climate change and pandemics are caused not by greenhouse gases and viruses, but by human nature.  We are greedy for food, shelter, adventure, self-fulfillment, human contact and— says this narrative—we must be punished for our sins.   But the current situation- death, poverty, loneliness- is an ineffective blueprint for climate solutions.  We were never going to be able to sacrifice our way out of climate change, especially not on the backs of the people who have historically done  most of the sacrificing.  There is an entrenched system that extracts CO2 from the ground and pumps it into the atmosphere, one that results not from inherent human badness but from the choices of a few humans with power.  Confronting that system will take 

We need to build things: wind turbines, solar panels, public transportation, denser cities, fairer societies.  We don’t need purification.  We don’t need absolution.  We need to get to work.

I’ve been scared to let myself feel anger because I’m a scientist.  We’re supposed to be objective, to prevent emotions from clouding our judgement.  But it strikes me as unscientific to pretend a thing that clearly exists does not, and I’m unsure that lying about our feelings will somehow make us more honest.   I’ve read too much British literature to believe that repressing emotions will lead to a healthy outcome for anyone.

I’ve also been reluctant to be publicly angry because of who I am.  I want to be liked and accepted.  I’ve learned to make myself small and agreeable, to use “I feel” 

rather than “I know” even when discussing the solutions to mathematical equations.  I know the lexicon for angry women: bitter, difficult, bitch.  But there’s a difference between the small and insular resentment that festers in the dark and the kind of illuminating fury that lights the way out of the tunnel.

That’s the fury I feel.  It’s that incandescent rage, shining like a beacon through dark times, lighting the way to something better.

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University.

S3, Ep22 | Ask a Scientist with NASA’s Dr. Kate Marvel

Personal Essay: I Am a Mad Scientist

Mary Annaïse Heglar

Today on Hot Take, Mary and Amy are joined by Kate Marvel, climate scientist at NASA, who answers listener questions about acid rain, geoengineering, astrology, and more.

This week on Hot Take, Amy & Mary give updates on Hurricane Ian, Manchin's failed permitting bill, discontent in Europe, and more.

Hot Take S3

S3, Ep23 | Hurricane Season Heats Up

Hot Take is a holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. Hosted by real-life friends Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt—an essayist and a journalist— Hot Take offers a unique perspective on the issue of climate change. With a breath of fresh humanity and humor, conversation moves swiftly from cackling about the bad week an oil company had, to speaking seriously and passionately about the unequal distribution of climate impacts and our own experiences of climate grief. And then washing it down with a round of dad jokes! Every week, we’ll connect you with the latest climate news and with the journalists and storytellers trying to make sense of this complex issue to help you see the world through climate-colored glasses. We ended production on Hot Take at the end of 2022, but you can still access episodes here, or 

A holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it.

Hot Take

Transcription

S3, Ep1 | The Real F&#ckBois of Fossil Fuel

S3, Ep2 | Free Britney and Lock Up Exxon

Mea Culpas Are Great, But Climate Leaders Need to Model Real Accountability

S3, Ep3 | The Kids Are All Angry!

S3, Ep4 | A Total Moral Disaster

S3, Ep5 |  Down Uterus! Down Girl! with Rebecca Solnit

S3, Ep6 | Of Meat and Men, with Alicia Kennedy

S3, Ep7 | Death of Democracy with Adam Serwer

S3, Ep8 | A Republican Climate Plan?

Fossil Fuel Workers Are Dying Inhaling Gases — Despite U.S. Warnings to Big Oil

S3, Ep9 | How Many Oil Jobs Are There Really?

S3, Ep10 | Trans Rights Are Climate Justice

SCOTUS Says No to Exxon, Now the Corporate Free Speech Fight Begins

Climate Cases

S3, Ep11 | Supremely F*&cked

S3, Ep12 | “Resistance” Over “Resilience”

S3, Ep13 | Joe Manchin v The World

The Real Free Speech Threat

S3, Ep14 | Climate Behind Bars

S3, Ep15 | The Quiet Climate Emergency

S3, Ep16 | Devil in the IRA Details

S3, Ep17 | Amy and Mary Take a TV Break

S3, Ep18 | A FOX in the Newsroom

S3, Ep19 | Climate Colonialism 101

S3, Ep20 | Both Sides of the Mississippi

S3, Ep21 | Follow the Money, Eat the Rich

S3, Ep24 | Reclaiming Identity Politics, with Olufemi Taiwo

S3, Ep25 | Climate Candidates to Watch in the Midterms

Hot Take S2

S2, Ep1 | Media in Meltdown and Climate in Crisis, with Kendra Pierre-Louis

S2, Ep2 | Mary and Amy Watched “The Politician”

S2, Ep3 | Climate Bois Club, with Kate Aronoff

S2, Ep4 | Hate to Say We Told You So, with Brian Kahn

S2, Ep5 | Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Climate and Food? With David Tamarkin

S2, Ep6 | No Ordinary Pain: Katrina at 15 (with Story Collider)

S2, Ep7 | There’s No Climate Justice without Indigenous Sovereignty, with Rebecca Nagle

S2, Ep8 | Mary and Amy Watched “I May Destroy You”

S2, EP9 |  Around the Way, with Drew Costley

S2, Ep10 |  The Flyest Debate Ever, with Brian Kahn

S2, Ep11 | Political Instability =/ Planetary Instability, with Justin Worland

S2, Ep12 | All the Lives in the Balance, with Rachel Ramirez

S2, Ep13 | Mitch McConnell’s Cold, Dead Hands

S2, Ep14 | Making the Case, with Rihana Gunn-Wright

S2, Ep15 | 2020: The Shitshow

S2, Ep16 | No Better Time for Climate Reparations, with Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

S2, Ep17 | Blood for Oil, with Antonia Juhasz

S2, Ep18 | Two Sides to Every Story?  With Lewis Wallace

S2, Ep19 | The Greenwashing Olympics, with Emily Atkin and Brian Kahn

S2, Ep20 | The Ultimate Abolition

S2, Ep21 | Hot and Cold with Rev Yearwood and The Coolest Show

S2, Ep22 | April 20 Is #FUBPDay

S2, Ep23 | Moving Fast and Breaking Sh*t

The Reason Covid-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation

S2, Ep24 | What Covid and Climate Have in Common: Science Denial, with ProPublica’s Caroline Chen

S2, Ep25 | Big Oil Had a Bad Month (Which Means We Had a Good One)

Hot Take S1

S1, Ep1 | Fangirl v Fangirl

S1, Ep2 | 2016-2017 in Review: The Hangover

S1, Ep3 | 2018: The Wake-Up Call

S1, Ep4 | 2019: It’s Go Time

S1, Ep5 | Jan 2020: No Chill, with Meera Subramanian

S1, Ep6 | Feb 2020: More Fucking Greenwashing! With Maddie Stone

S1, Ep7 | March 2020: Pandemic, Primaries, and Not Asking Permission, with Sarah Miller

S1, Ep8 | March 22, 2020: Seeing Corona Through Climate-Colored Glasses, with David Wallace-Wells

S1, Ep9 | Disaster Denialism with Dr. Samantha Montano

S1, Ep10 | So This Is Purgatory, with Eric Holthaus

S1, Ep11 | Season 1 Finale: Rum O’Clock!

S3, Ep22 | Ask a Scientist with NASA’s Dr. Kate Marvel

About This Episode

Transcript

Next Up

S3, Ep23 | Hurricane Season Heats Up

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Personal Essay: I Am a Mad Scientist