Band-Aid Town and the Psychology of Climate Change

Shoot him right off on them into the sunset. Well this might be like, you know, yours and you and yours in trouble here. Are you ready for some? Okay, what scenario me? Okay. A friend of yours has just had an in fortunate chainsaw accident and cut a femoral artery. Okay. That's the leg artery. Yeah , it's a big one. Okay. So do you do a make a tourniquet with your tee shirt? You just are ripped off or do you apply?

That's like a whole Cogan or be a play the bandaid that you just found in your first aid kit. Uh, okay. First of all, it's c you got to , so that thing up with a stick and some spiderweb that you found on the trail you got , you got two minutes before they bleed out. Okay. Yeah, I obviously am willing for the attorney . Okay. Okay, good, good. I'm serious. Okay. I'm running inside getting a sewing machine and then I'm going to go to town on it. Okay. You've just failed .

Okay. Your friend who's a share one rob zero weight so I've never taken anything seriously. This is going to be okay. I'm on. This is a quiz man. Okay . I'm going to try to like this , make this personal. Okay. Okay. Yeah . You are trying to pass a kidney stone. Ouch. And it hurts like nothing you can imagine cause you're a man. You have never given birth. Okay. Do you reach for a two aspirin or be a dose of Vicodin? Oh, I think it just depends where.

Let's say I'm a , like I just was at Yosemite and I climbed to the top of El Cap. I just jumped off. Right. Right . Now you're lying in bed. You're an

Your dentist is likely to recommend a extraction with the novacane injection or B , three shots of Whiskey, a tobacco poultice , and sleep it off. I think I'm going to win this one. What do you say? A share B. Take B B sounds nicer. I know . Can we combine them? Can we get the novacane extraction and the three shots [inaudible] all of that and the bike. Exactly. So we'll get, what's the, what's the point here?

Well. Okay, the point is that we're idiots, first of all, but everyone listening already knew then we didn't need to do this. Well, you remember when I , uh, when I was talking about being on that airplane in episode one and the planes on the wings on fire, I was , I was lying . It was not true story. But you know how if you're not a real doctor, right? But I felt like, you know, sorry, I don't need, I don't need booze or my meal and let's, let's stop the movie. Let's take care of the wing.

This is what I think we're doing as a society, right? I mean, my point is that our responses are so damn weak compared to what's needed and you feel like it's just, it's like malpractice, right? So stepping back, the crises of climate change, the energy transition, we need to make biodiversity loss.

All the things we've been talking about, you're saying, our response is to take some whiskey and some a bandaid and some bandaids instead of the tourniquet or the, hey, let's stop what we're doing and do something different. Really different, really different.

You know, there's a goal of 75% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels by by 2050 if you just step back and you think about that or you think about, you know what we're hearing now from the climate science community telling us that we need to cut emissions 45% in the next 11 years. Right , right, right.

What we're actually doing here in this is doesn't even register on the Richter scale and this is a community of people that, I mean we, I chose to live in this community in part because there is, I would say more awareness and concern about, about climate change in other issues. In a lot of places. It is a very thriving community. Sustainability

And so I got, I knew, I kind of knew everyone in the city council and I, I'd started a nonprofit and was starting a school farm and I was pretty active and I was getting some award in front of the city council. And I came up and I received the award and I, and then I said, thank you. What was the name of the award? I have no idea, but it was like was different putting like the do gooder of the year award.

I remember in the Simpsons thing , comber won the award of a for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. So maybe, maybe that was your old something great. I'm like, Oh God , thank you so much. And Dah , Dah , Dah . And uh, this is a small city council chamber room. You know you're looking right at people and and and so I go sit back down and then like the next item on the agenda, they say they have this kind of a Rah Rah. Yeah, we want that freeway.

Okay , so, so your award though was for being an activist for environmental conservation, for reducing community resilience. You know, climate change and then it's like, okay, we're done with that. Now look , now we're going to go expand a freeway. We need at least six more lanes on this puppy. Did he even take a deep breath between those two things? I don't remember. Go get a shot of whiskey.

But yeah, you're allowed to do community comments and all of a sudden I go , I walk right back up there and I just started like [inaudible] I was pitching the word like wipe your ass with, maybe you might want to work on how articulate your responses is . That's a hard one to understand. It was like a peanuts cartoon. You're looking at the girl I was, I was peed . I felt like it was tokenism. Like you know , don't do that or , or what is wrong? What's the psychology here?

I do actually like I picture you taking your award and just spiking it on the ground into a thousand pieces and then storming off. Is it like some kind of political theaters or something? It wasn't that bad. It was pretty theatrical. I W I was, I was fuming. I gotta give you credit for, for doing that. However effective it was. I'm sure the freeway was not, oh, it's in now. It's there dark . Okay, so I'm not going to give you that much good .

No, I'm seriously would give you some credit for actually standing up and saying something, you know, in my experience is that, to be perfectly honest, I'm still trying to navigate building relationships with folks. I don't want to just stand up and kind of yell at you at the city council who has appointed me to be on this advisory board, yell at the mayor, get pissed off at city staff who I feel like are, are not doing enough.

Although the psychology is fascinating because there's politeness, right? Like you could have Jason just been polite and accepted your award and y'all an eye roll. You know, at that this highway. But instead he said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak in public. But it's, it's really hard to do that and say that is a difficult place to be. And I empathize with you and share , these are thoughtful people that you work with, they friends, they care, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And I have to, I also understand the reality of what they're dealing with as well. The city's got a budget that it has to try to figure out how to meet. So we've been trying to push to get some staffing on at the city level to help implement this climate action plan. You know, what we're hearing is issues around being able to afford bringing on a new staff person and yeah .

And you know, and there are these other concerns that that sort of Trump, right now the city's trying to figure out how to, how to make sure that the library or in the pool stay funded and we've got issues with, with housing and homelessness and there are real concerns. We have talked about that, how you end up seeing all of society through the Lens of money and what can we pay for and these things that we talk about, they're not money makers , right?

The idea of not putting in the highway or the idea of, of changing your infrastructure, they're , they're not moneymaking ideas. And so it's really hard for people to get out of that mindset, I think.

So it makes kind of sense that I might be concerned about my social status. I also want to be effective, right? So if I just stand up there and yell at them, no offense Jason, they might just write me off right in at the same time, I also understand where they're coming from. But what do you do with that understanding when the planet's on fire, whatever the, the, the arteries been cut, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use.

He had cancer and, and he lived far away and my mom and my sister and I, we were all trading off in the last few months of his life, trading off, taking care of him and , and going to his house. And, and I'm really glad I got to do that. And it, it felt wonderful way for him to go. I think he was ready and got to spend time with family. So that was great. And we were all really exhausted afterwards, you know, that's a hard thing to do.

So he actually had some money that , uh, when he died he turned over and my mom sort of as a, hey, we just went through this, let's, let's do something together. She said she wanted to take us all on a cruise and you know, for people I know I was like a cruise. Oh I can't think of a more wasteful fuel burning scenario.

But I ended up deciding I could decide, I'll either make the stink and say, you know, give her a lecture about how bad a cruises or I can just go along with it and try not to hate myself for doing so. But I ended up going on the cruise and I swear I then I feel so conflicted sometimes. Like, I'm such a hypocrite, you know, here I am saying we need to make this big change that doesn't really involve hanging out on cruise ships.

Uh , and I could go into that, but what a, what a shit show that scene was. But oh my gosh. [inaudible] totally reminds me of what happened at, happened to me and my family. So when I was in this Willits phase of our life, we decided as a family that we were not going to fly anymore. Okay. So then, then what happens of course, is that you get invitations . So friends say, hey, flight in New Orleans and let's go on a, on a, on a cruise, or hey, it's with the Goddamn cruises.

Hey, why don't you join us in Europe or whatever. I mean, and we kept having to tell people , uh , no, I'm sorry we don't fly anymore. And then it brings up, well what? Well , why? And then you say , uh , well, you know, there's, there's this thing called climate change, or that's the way you said it. There's this thing you idiot may have heard of. I mean, are you passive aggressive in how you explain this up? My wife did more of the talking. She's better. Thank goodness though .

But it was really difficult. And though , so there's a lot of fallout of stepping out of what's normal and making a statement and changing what you do now. We didn't suffer too much because whenever I wanted to go somewhere, I was in Mendocino county and we would just like, okay, go to the coast or I mean, it's a beautiful, gorgeous place. So in some ways what it forced us to do was really explore what was near us and, and that was a fantastic adventure.

But, but it, it kind of put a barrier between us and other people. So were they, were they mad at you? What was the, what was the general response when you tell people that? Well , just kind of a little like, what's, why I don't get it. You know, I think there's assumption that if you have money in some ways and then , then you've earned it, you deserve it and you work hard. And so why not? Why not have fun with it? And what's wrong with that?

And when you say something like, well, actually we probably shouldn't spend our money burning this kerosene, what are you doing? Are you telling them that they're wrong? You know, or they're not doing, they're , they're not. Oh , they're hypocrites or they're not. Uh , they're not virtuous and not as virtuous as you are. Right .

So it puts you in this really weird dynamic and yet in some ways, what I think is as good as it forces conversation that maybe wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done something kind of dramatic or out or out of kilter compared to norms. Right. Well , I think it's , um, you know, it's hard because we're talking about social status to make a decision like that and to do it when you're communicating to others, sort of the , the rationale for it.

How do you do that without them feeling judged by you? How do you do that without them feeling, in this case, sort of unloved. Like, you love us enough to get on a plane and you're , you know, have your kid see their grandparents or whatever the hell it is. You know what I mean? And that's really tough. And I think the other thing that's hard is you do these things and you make some of these sacrifices and then you look around you.

It's not like that plane that you would have taken didn't take off. That's a classic argument they would give us. Yeah . All right. But it's , but it is true that, oh, it's so easy to rationalize this behavior that's , that's part of the problem, right? It's like 5,000 of US flying. Then maybe flights get cut , you know, so you can say, sure. Yeah . Right .

Maybe the more vocal they tend to be. But there's a question about how effective that is. So yeah ,

But there are some folks that come there regularly every day and they're commenting and you could just tell that they are obsessive. You know, they're spending their time reading articles about how bad things are and they'll cry out in the comments or whatever. And

So anyway , uh, I met a woman who was, I guess her title was something like the chief sustainability officer for an airline. Oh, good luck. Right. Which is a little plus her, her job was to shut down the airline, present her, her strategic plan for the CEO of the company. All it says is stop, go out of business, stop paving the runways .

So, but she was telling me about , uh , she had just had a, a major achievement of replacing the styrofoam coffee cups that they were using on the plane with, I don't know, some kind of biodegradable material. Right. Which, okay. That is an improvement and yeah, right. I didn't know what to say to her. You know, I was just kind of , um, okay , that's great. You know,

And , uh, I don't know that I , I think I started my career trying to sort of be in that, that part of it and quickly I couldn't stay there, you know?

You're like, oh, I'm a chief sustainability officer. And then you'd say, what do I do? What I say a funny fart jokes on a, on a podcast, or maybe they're not finding out .

You know, they want to have nothing to do with it. They , um , they like a new tron star going to collapse

She's, she was homeschooling him. He was doing survival his classes. So I mean, he's the, he's the kid I'm going to contact, you know, when everything breaks down, you know, so that he can , uh, he could show me how to bow hunt.

The , uh , the guy that was in the Lord of the Rings , uh , Aragorn uh, what's a Viggo? Mortensen. Okay . And , uh , he's the patriarch of this large family of , uh , feral list as a good lights gig . He's got these feral children and these raising them in the woods. I think it opens with like one of these kids jumping out of a tree and stabbing a deer in the face and drinking the blood or something . It's warm . But he's basically teaching them how to, how to live in connection with nature.

And you know, some of the things that we would say are good ideas. I don't know about the stabbing part, but, but his wife , uh, has cancer and has been sent back to a hospital. And Anyway, the movie is really about the values of this off-grid existence versus his father in law who's got the very much on grid corporate lawyer type existence.

And yeah, I mean, this, this stuff, I don't know , W it's a good exploration of your , you're dropping out and , and how you do that and the conflicts that arise. Yeah. Well this, you know, this, all this discussion reminds me of, of kind of the Ken Ward story is what we brought up in our first episode. And you know, that's , that's sort of the activist mindset where you are going to try to initiate change in the society that you're remaining part of.

So you're not, you know, you're going to critique it, but you're also going to be present and have enough relationships within that society that you're hoping to change hearts and minds and then eventually behaviors in that society are in. And it takes a huge range, of course, of strategies and tactics.

He didn't decided to kind of drop out or he stayed, he stayed in that place where he remained focused on the, the true nature of the crisis, the climate crisis in this case, but was not like, Fuck Society, I'm Outta here. I was trying to actually change things.

And then I think there's a, an almost dropping off the spectrum entirely. You could think of them as the vigilantes and the, a prime example has gotta be Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Here's a guy that, I mean, I hate to say it, he had some similar things to point out about society that we have and uh, but his response was just cruel. Violent. Yeah . Completely antisocial, nothing pro social about it. That is a response.

When they finally found him and they found his cabin in the, in the woods, he had written on the walls of his cabin, the names of a bunch of people. And my dad's name was on there. Oh my God . Yeah . I mean, I don't, I don't think my dad was like high on the, on the target list necessarily, but kind of freaky. You gotta call like

I mean, your, your socioeconomic circumstances make a big difference in terms of what you're , you know, positioned to be able to do. But I, I would say just don't drop out, you know, like it's really hard to stay in this place. I mean, we're talking about our own struggles, you know, whether it's with family or in our communities, in our own personal lives.

Dealing with our own hypocrisy is just that, that, that challenge of trying to be present with these, these concerns and feeling like we're doing something but not completely dropping. Yeah, no , just engaging. I think you're right. I think we, all three of us on some level have all embraced the sort of activist part of that spectrum. And like I said, that has a big range in and of itself, different ways to be an activist.

But I think what we're facing in our communities, in our society, the global environment, we're all activists now, or we've got to be, you've got to be, you know, what's interesting is I think about the frustrations we've all felt and the frustrations that people like can ward and I, I think about it in terms of this concept of the , uh, the Overton window. If you guys heard of that a little bit.

No. Well, it's the sort of political science idea that there's a p politicians are willing to do, only comes about through what conversations are there and , and their sense of the society. Except that this is an idea that's appropriate. That's okay . So, so this, let me see if I got it . This window is like a political feasibility test , right ? Can a mainstream politician talk about the limits to growth for example, or, or, or changing the, the car culture, the car infrastructure.

They can't talk about it until they know that, oh, most of society's talking like they're the last people to actually talk about it and then say, Oh, here's the policy that helps us align with what we're talking about. Why is it , why is this thing called the Overton window? That sounds like some sort of a CIA operation or something. You know , it's like a political scientist name Overton came up with this idea.

Okay. And so what I think what's happening is that what we have to do is, is try to open up that window, like widen it and and sort of say things that are unpopular so that the Polish they can become more part of the conversation so that finally say, oh wait a second. Actually a lot more people are talking about this, so are broadening the Overton window, opening the Overton window.

It's key to all the conversations that we've all been having and all these activists had been having over over decades actually. Well and you're waiting for that window to, to open enough so then the political and business leaders can actually say it as well and follow.

Really, I like the, you introduced me to that term because it actually ties very closely to what we're trying to do at post carbon institute, which is to have these conversations, these truthful almost brutally honest conversations and articles and even this podcast about what's happening in society and to to be able to open. I think that, or to widen what you can see out that Overton window.

And in fact it reminds me of of the , the Milton Friedman quote, you know, that guy is, he's kind of the arch enemy of ours in terms of economics. They have liberal economics, but we all agree that he said something really important, which was things change only when you've got a crisis or at least perception of a crisis. And the changes that are made depend on the ideas that are lying around. Yeah. And that's our job is to, to put those ideas out there and to keep them alive.

And I think he said it until the W, I don't know exactly. Hit the politically politically impossible now becomes bullying inevitable. Right, exactly. That's what we need to do. So what's happening now? It's interesting like there, there's the extinction rebellion. For example, there's , there's that , uh, the Swedish , um, teenager Gretta , uh , Third Berg , right? Yeah. She is amazing. Right? So she's getting, she's saying stuff that of course is, is blunt and, and direct.

Look what I'm imagine. Let's hear some of it actually here. Let's , let's , let's give a listen. Okay.

No matter how uncomfortable that may be , you only speak of the green. It turned off economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake . You're not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden. You live to us children, but I don't care about being popular . I care about climate justice and the living planets.

All the civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.

And I, the thing that strikes me most about what she's doing is the level of courage that it takes to one, be that confrontational and to, to, to set aside , uh , as we've talked about social status, reputation for her. This is great social status. She's , she don't care about being popular. Right . Meanwhile, she was incredibly popular, right? Yeah. She's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, right? Yeah .

I mean, I w which I should say is a little more prestigious than the Nobel prize in economics.

I certainly don't think that was her initial motivation, but she's become sort of a star and I think she's become a star because she has courage because she speaks so clearly because she's expressing what I think a lot of people are feeling and haven't had the courage or the ability to communicate. And as you were saying, Jason, she's not doing it in a vacuum. It's not like a , a big bang that suddenly emerged out of nowhere. She's a product of something.

And in her own journey that she's talked about was when she became awakened to the reality of climate change. She's a person who happens to like to kind of research and understand things and has a very analytical mind. She was fortunate enough to find a great body of literature and evidence, including people making connections like we've made on the podcast between climate change and economics .

But the thing that really strikes me is that, and this is something I think we all need, is to decide what, you know, it's CR . You have to have that courage and decide how much are we gonna push ourselves without courage and how willing are we to, to confront others. But as I think you, you all have pointed out, we've got to have some savvy about that. We've got to do it in a way that doesn't just shut people down.

And I think also the realize that she is saying this stuff and she's getting heard . But it isn't. This is probably not the first time these people have actually heard these critiques. All right ? They've probably been hearing critiques like hers for many years and it's like marketing, right? You've got to get this message out over and over again and it might be the 10th time someone hears it. And so there's some kind of tipping point happening perhaps in the society right now. I hope so.

Where so many people are now like, oh my gosh, this is an existential crisis that uh , we may be switching now and flipping in terms of what's permissible to talk about. And so if you've been frustrated in the past, I think stay, stay with it and get back in there because this could be the time when the window has shifted to a point where now you can be listened to and appreciate it. And ,

Without realizing that people have been talking about this idea in various forms for over a decade, you know , which is, I'm not saying that out of any , uh , frustration at all. I think it's great. It's just, it reminds you that you may not be recognized.

You may not be that voice that a lot of people are tuning into, but us engaging, you know, having the courage to engage with people in our community that it could be your physical community, could be your social community or family, whatever it is, makes a difference. Yeah . And whatever you need to do to allow yourself to stay in the game, right.

It , by staying in the game, I mean, staying really present with the severity and the urgency of the crises that we face and still staying engaged within society. And the world around you. And that means living with hypocrisy.

That means living with these, that means trying to figure out how to communicate with honesty and clarity and courage to enable these things, but also not torching your relationships, not shooting yourself in the foot and maybe maybe forgiving those around you and forgiving yourself. Maybe those are really important things to do. Yeah, absolutely. And so , um , you know, maybe a closing thought, which is I think this is probably going to be our last episode for awhile .

If we bring this, this show back for season two and we hope that we do and we hope that our listeners help us do that by , by spreading the word, you know, maybe in the hiatus. Think about what it is that is the edge for you as a listener. You know, how can you stay engaged and be an activist and then let us know what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. I liked what you said, Jason, about how we may be at an inflection point or a turning point. And so seems like more people are moving into crazy

A crazy.

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