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Welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host, Melanie Young, and if you follow me regularly, you know I love to introduce you to inspiring women who have created amazing second acts. I think I'm on my third act at this point in my life, so I support all women who find new purpose and passion at new stages of our life. And that is really what my guest today
is doing. We're kind of soul sisters in other ways because I live now in New Orleans and she was born and raised in New Orleans, and she is doing amazing things in an area that we are all very concerned about, and that is climate change. Now that I've moved to New Orleans. It's like in my face every day because we just started hurricane season. But you know, even in Tennessee, where I used to live. In New York, where I lived for much of my life, we were
hit by hurricanes quite often. The worst one in New York when I lived there was Hurricane Sandy, which was just incredibly destructive. We were talking about that last night at an event. It is a global situation. As I travel the world visiting wineries for my life as a wine and food writer, I talked to farmers all the time who are being impacted by climate change. This is
not your backyard, it is our global backyard. And Kathleen Biggins is changing the conversation and really moving the conversation forward in this area. And we're going to talk to her about this.
So.
Kathleen Biggins, founder and president of Sea Change Conversations, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding the conversation in a very constructive way about climate change. Welcome to Fearless, Fabulous you.
Oh, it's such a pleasure to be with you.
Well, Kathleen, we're going to start with your backstory. As I mentioned, you were born and raised in New Orleans. Tell us our listeners about your life here and what your early interests were and where you ended up as pursuing your education.
Sure, so, as you said, I grew up in New Orleans. I was the youngest of three girls. I used to take the street car to school every day and loved growing up in New Orleans. Just thought it was the most interesting place on the planet, and indeed it still is in many ways to me. I had the opportunity to go to college at the University of Virginia, and then afterwards I spent a year as a rotary scholar in Europe, traveling around and being exposed to so many different types of cultures.
And no matter where I went.
Though, there was no place like New Orleans, and it always has held such an important place in my heart. And that actually has helped kind of propel me because, just as you said, if you're living in New Orleans, climate change is a really big threat. And I will say that my love for my home city is part of what really pushed me to start this outreach.
Well, it's interesting because you, actually, like me, were in a communications spell for many years. I had a public relations business in New York and young Communications, and you worked for Ogilvie and Mail. Like me, you knew you wanted to move to New York and pursue the life because you make it there, you make it anywhere. And I was the same way. I left Atlanta and Chattanooga where I was from, to Tedson, New York, and like you, slept on friends sofas and until I got that land
of that job. How long did you work in that field in advertising and marketing?
So I worked at Ogilvie probably around nine years, and then I moved to Princeton, New Jersey, which is where I reside now, and worked for a marketing company there for several years until I had my second child, And so then I took some time out and really did volunteer work as I raised my two sons, but was always quite involved in a wide range of things. I was on the board of our local symphony as well as the Watershed Institute, which is a environmental group in
the area. So always wanted to give back to the community and always wanted to have the opportunity to continue to learn and contribute.
That's wonderful that you were able to do that. What in you're Marriorg How long have you been married to your husband and what does he do? Oh wow, so we've obviously you had a supportive husband to do that.
Indeed, we have been married now for thirty seven years. Thirty eight years, congratulations. And he is very supportive of this outreach because believes in it as well. But he actually runs a consulting business that helps companies relocate big
chunks of jobs. It's called location economics. So it's been really intriguing for me to have that lens on this issue because he's helping so many companies decide where to move in to help me understand how kind of movers and shakers within the business world are factoring in climate change or factoring in some of the there are needs that are being impacted by climate change. So it's been a great partnership in a marriage and also in what we do, I would think.
So it's a big topic because people relocate. You know, housing is important, and I know here in Louisiana the cost of insurance is through this roof, and our friends in California they're struggling right now with this because of the fires, and insurance is becoming a huge issue. That's why I rent, not by I've learned. I was fascinated by the fact, and I think it's wonderful that you
did step away. I think it's important to underscore to my women listeners that it is perfectly okay to step away from your career and do the you know, take time off to be with your family, and do it without any regrets or worries. I mean fortunate at a supportive husband, but it is important. A lot of women struggle with this. I didn't have to because I never had children, but I think it's great that you did, and then it provided you the time to pursue interest
in your talents. In other ways, what was interesting is you became involved with garden clubs, and that really was the jumping off point to where you are now with one of them. There were several going with sea Change conversation, so give us a little backstory on that.
Sure, as you said, it's often really important to have the ability to pursue new passions and to strive for new talents or new accomplishments, and so gardening with always one that I wanted to be better at and that I felt I was not that knowledgeable and was a little intimidated by it. So I joined a local garden club, the Garden Club of Princeton, which is part of the Garden Club of America, and I learned quite a lot through that association.
But one of the.
Things is the fact that many people don't know is a Golden Club of America has a very strong environmental platform. They believe very much that we should protect the natural world and that we should be educated on the natural world. And yet they are in no way a partisan group or a left leaning group, or even what you would call an environmental group. They have a very reasonable and I would say passionate, but not partisan voice in this arena.
And one of the things they do every year is hold the conference in Washington, d C. Where they bring in delegates from all over the country to learn about the priorities and to hear from people on the hill, people in the administration about issues that were wending through that were topical to these times. And I attended one of these conferences representing my club, again, the Garden Club of Princeton, and I heard from a military person and from a business leader that climate change was real.
And almost knocked my socks off.
I was like, it's not real.
What and yet these two really illustrious, smart, articulate leaders within their fields were saying that it indeed was true. And that was kind of my first awakening. And then a couple of years later, Hurricane Sandy hit our region caused a great devastation, and I heard that climate chain has kind of exacerbated the amount of damage that had
been done. And so I went back down to this conference and learned that in fact, climate change was coming faster, and it was going to hit us harder, and it was going to be much more expensive and painful if we didn't get in.
Front of it.
And that was kind of a wake up call for me something I had been just intellectually interested in and kind of following became a calling, became a desire to wake up my colleagues and friends and loved ones who really didn't think of climate change as a true threat or something that was pertinent to them or that they had to worry about. And yet I knew we were
all collectively really on a dangerous trajectory. And it was a communications challenge, if you will, how can we wake people up without turning them off because it was a topic people didn't want to hear about and didn't want to speak to others about.
It's so interesting, you know a couple of things. First of all, I had no idea that garden clubs were that active in you know, kept I think about my grandmother. She was the garden club. But they were a little white gloves and they you know, looked at camellias. But it's not that. And I'm already telling about a story to write about that. It's very interesting. I have to ask, what about Katrina? You didn't mention herk King Katrina? How was and that was two thousand and five and this
light bulb was two thousand and six. Sandy was later? Was your family? How was your family impacted by Hurricane Katrina? Was your family here?
So my parents moved out the year of Hurricane Katrina, so right before the storm. So so I did not have direct family here. I did have cousins and aunts here, and they obviously suffered as well.
But Katrina was an.
Interesting challenge because so much of the damage really was because the levees failed, which many say is more of a man made issue than the fact that the hurricane was so powerful it overwhelmed us. It was more that our defenses failed, and so I haven't linked that as closely to climate though I do think that my understanding that nature can overwhelm us, that the power can be so strong and something that humans can't control, that many
Americans haven't experience, though they are more frequently now. But growing up with hurricanes as part of your I won't say daily life, but part of your consistent fear and concern and changes your perspective on nature and humanity, human's relationship with her interesting.
And I'm glad your family was lucky. We live on in Lakeview where it was underwater, and the streets are still a mess. I think they're finally fixing them. How long has it been?
You know?
Here's how climate change has really impacted me, and I think everybody you know, I think once you explain it as how it impacts your day to day life. You know the cost of food, food, in agriculture. I travel a lot to Europe and I talked, as I said earlier, to wine producers. They're having to alter vineyards and adapt because of mold, mildew, excessive rain, excessive heat. The grapes
you're sensitive. It's not just grapes, it's all agriculture. Is being impacted by it, and that's why your food prices are up. So that's where it hurts the pocket book. It hurts the pocketbook when the insurance companies want to raise your policy rates because of more natural disasters that keep be happy, whether it's earthquakes, floods, rains. I think about my friends in Asheville, North Carolina, who in their lives never thought their talent would be hit and it did.
You're absolutely right.
So just to clarify for your readers for a second, one of the things that we try to do is bring that reality that climate change is hitting things you care about right now, right your insurance or the stability of your community exactly, but also that we shouldn't see it within a partisan perspective, but in fact it's a human issue because it impacts our jobs and economy, our health and safety, and geopolitical stability, things that all Americans
care about. And then we try to localize our messaging because we travel all over the country doing this and I think it's thirty three states now, about twenty two thousand people reaching out towards moderates and conservatives who may not see that climate change is impacting them already and may not believe still that it's a conversation that they need to or want to have. And you're absolutely right by translating it down to how it matters today individuals.
It's an important way in and its important way for people to open their perspective on the issue.
You've got to address the nimbi's and not in my backyards and the not in my lifetimes, like that's the next generation, but it does impact everybody today. And you underscore at See Change Conversation, which is a nonprofit that you are nonpartisan, non political, and you avoid the word environmental activism, which I think is really important. Why is that important to underscore and your mission at Sea Change Conversation.
Because I think it's so easy to pigeonhole it if you say it's an environmental issue, and obviously it has environmental impacts, clear, but the fact of the matter is these impacts are now cascading outside of the natural world into our human systems, our economy, our communities, and whether we can be strong even as a society, our health systems, and so all of a sudden, if you pigeonhole it, it seems something small and it's easier to identify as
something that is appropriate for the left, because they're the ones that are the Greenies, they are over there. But when instead you position it as well, this is impacting our geopolitical security, or hey, this is impacting my wallet, this is impact acting what I have to pay for your health, my health exactly, and then it becomes, as I said, a human issue. And we drive so hard to help people understand that we're all in this boat together and we all need to care.
So when did you you established Sea Change Conversations in twenty fourteen, you decided to create the nonprofit? What were the steps to do that and why you decided to You know, there are many ways to create a nonprofit and its purpose, right, why give us the why in terms of we know what propelled you to it, But why did you decide to focus on conversations and really what becomes education and awareness building? Ah?
So, we, as I said, we wanted to find a way to wake people up with turning them off. And originally we were just focused on our home community of Princeton Right Garden Club.
And we realized that there are many people.
Again, colleagues, friends, even loved ones who weren't really in the group who didn't want to hear about it, didn't want us to talk about it to the met a cocktail party or over dinner or waiting in the school line.
It's like a no go.
And so we were like, Okay, how can we get them into the conversation. And we realized that if we replicated what had happened to us down in Washington, d C. At these conferences where these outside experts came in and talked about it and we listened because they weren't greenies, they weren't environmentalists, they were someone different talking about it, that maybe we'd have a chance.
And so we started.
Off just doing speaker series in Princeton and we served really good wine and really good food and then invited people to come and they came, and we had speakers like the former governor Christine Whitman, who had also been the head of the EPA, who was a Republican governor who was very very savvy on climate change, in climate policy. We had a rear admiral come in and talk about
the military perspective. We had had a risk strategy from Gloman Sachs come in and talk about risk strategy assessment and how we're not doing that well in the realm of climate, and we had many others, but it created that safe route in in Princeton. However, I was getting very, very frustrated that people who came were not coming to all of them and we're getting kind of a deep dive in a specific SLVER issue, but not a three
sixty view. And that's when I wrote, with climate experts and energy experts this PowerPoint primer or primmer if you will, Yees brought forward and we originally showed it to the garden clubs. They asked this to bring it to National. We showed it to National and they were like, oh, we really like this. We want you to open our conferences down in DC for several years running because they
felt it set the table. It framed the issue in a nonpartisan way, in an inclusive way that other speakers could then build off of, and people who were there as delegates hurt us and then invited us to come to their communities and bring this conversation there.
And at that time we.
Decided we really need to expand and become a not for profit because we needed to fundraise and able to afford to travel the country even though those speakers are all volunteers.
Just we needed to be able.
To maintain what we were doing, and so that kind of led us to are not for profit status.
So you raise money which basically funds the speaking programs, right the primer and you have three levels of primers from what I see on the website, which for our listeners to see change conversations dot org. But why don't you explain that more?
So we.
Raise the funds for several things. Now, we definitely to help us get out to places that don't have the budgets to really pay to bring us. So for our travel costs, we often stay with our hosts to keep the costs down.
So we really do this.
As I said, our volunteers speakers are all volunteers, and so we do everything we can to keep our costs down. But we also spend a lot of time on creating follow up information that will continue the dialogue, continue that conversation with audience members after we leave that market.
So we have.
Monthly newsletters of news of hope, news of concern. We do blogs, we do webinars, We do all sorts of education materials even in schools and for other groups. Again and to bring this kind of non partisan, inclusive voice to the to the broader discussion, if you will. So we definitely do that. We also do tailor our primers.
We have different types of primers. We have those that use health and focus just on how climate change impacts our health and safety, because that's a really important way in. And we also have primers that focus more on business for business audiences because we've also been asked by many companies to come in and talk to their employees to help them understand why perhaps that company is pivoting to a new strategy because of the realities of climate change.
And so, yes, we have the ability to tailor, and we have several already tailored that we are currently presented presenting.
So climate change is a big topic and then there's a lot of little topics in it. You know what I'm going to ask you, how you define I think this is important Probace should have done in the beginning, But how you define climate change? Because there are people who deny it. Some people have called it global warming. It's climate change. Who it's not. We're warming. There are places that are raining more or muddy more. It's not just about heat. It's about a lot of other things.
It involves food waste, which is a big topic with me. I've covered it a lot. So it's you know, how it's you said, it's a lifestyle. How would you define it to someone who says it's not my problem. I don't know if it's really true or not.
Well, the way we define it often in our presentations is it's simply the changes in our long term weather patterns are hot, are cold, our rain or snow, even our wind and water currents. And when we talk about it, we talk about really the changes that we have started to feel since the mid twentieth century. So think about what was normal that then. It's very different than what
is normal today. And I think most people, even deniers, are noticing that things are different, that the weather is much less predictable, that it's kind of gotten on steroids. Things that happened before are happening in a much more powerful and dangerous way. Many people say natural cycles. Our presentation addresses that straight on and helps them understand why
it's not. Many people say, oh, the climate's always been changing, and we help them understand why today's changes is at a rate that is really unprecedented and is being caused by human activity, and.
It's really straightforward.
Once you lay out the science in a very nonpartisan, comprehensive way, that part of climate change isn't that complicated.
The part that is complicated.
Is how the fact that we are changing our composition of our atmosphere by putting up more greenhouse gases, primarily by burning fossil fuels, and how that is cascating across the natural systems, and how those changes are impacting, as I said before, our human systems. And that gets quite complicated, and there's lots of room for disagreement and pushback, and we recognize that.
But the science is.
Pretty darn clear, and what we can see and experience with our own eyes and in our own backyards is getting clear as well. And so I think that really helps us that once we lay it out in a very welcoming, nonpartisan, here's the fact kind of way, we really can get people to open their minds and go, wow, this is something I need to care about.
I think those are really good points. I mean, you know, it becomes a hotbed because you've got companies that you know, I grew up in Chattanooga examples. I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When I grew up there in the seventies, it was named one of the most polluted cities in the United States. There was, you know, the Chicken poultry farm. The whole city smelled, the processing farm. There was Schultz Tannery smell.
There was the Cisco. There was every kind of manufacturing and they were dumping into the water and they were admitting into the air, and it was filthy, and as a result, many people moved away. Chattanooga had a bad reputation. Nobody cared about it, and finally people woke up and invested in turning things around to with the mission and goal which they have succeeded doing to make it green and invest in environmental programs and also invest in fest internet,
the things to make life make it more smoothly. And now it is a very hot destination in Many people, including a lot of Californians, are relocating there because it's considered safer to live there now than California seems to be burning up or falling into the ocean. And I love California. So that's an example of cities and communities becoming realizing there's a problem. But it took the bad publicity to say, oh, we got to do something because
everybody was leaving, including me. That's an example.
Well, I was just in Chattanooga this year. Presently, maybe it was the last fall, but recently we were just in Chattanooga, and it is a happening place. It is place, and people are so proud of it and about the fact it's becoming more of an economic powerhouse and a place that people want to live. So you're absolutely right. These things are tied directly to our quality of life and quality of our local economy.
I do think.
I think that in the realm of climate change, though, one of the misperceptions is that climate action has to be painful in a sacrifice, and it's just not the case anymore, right, And so you know, taking climate action is actually super smart economically that yields so much in return that it's really short sighted and expensive not to And that's a message that we've been able to also get out there that I think many people don't get because they just get hammered, Oh it's going to cost
me more money. Oh it's going to drive up my energy costs, And that's just a tiny sliver that's not really the full picture at all.
Well, also, you said your husband's in the relocation business. It also impacts where companies set up their businesses and where they relocate people and where people move. New Orleans is suffering because it's lost a lot of people. It lost a lot of people after Katrina, but it has continued to have a declining population because it has an image problem. It has a part, the good part of the image, but the negative part is you know, hurricanes dirty.
We just had a massive blackout in the middle Memorial Day weekend, one hundred thousand people out energy because they're load shedding. You know, there are so many factors and you see it and they need, you know, and the government is a bit discombobulated on how to funnel those funds to make it happen, and they're gonna have to. It's going to be a wake up call. We thought
Katrina was. It wasn't and it has to be. But I think one of the reasons it's going to be a wake up call is that economically, people are leaving and businesses aren't coming in. And that sometimes is the spark when you realize the population is exiting and investment is not coming in that's when people say we need to do something, it should be other reasons as well, like health and wellness and whatnot. But that's what I think, that's what spurred Chad Nigga.
Yeah, you know, and you're also absolutely right that businesses are making decisions based on what is best for their bottom line, where their facilities will be safe.
And also where.
Where they can get the type of energy that is being mandated by many of their stakeholders, and especially if they're international companies that they're mandated on the global scale or by Europe and other people that are at the forefront that are forcing these global companies to raise their standards. And so companies have embraced clean energy and many of
the climate strategies that make sense. Unfortunately, we are still in a place where it is a partisan hot potato and tend to use it to whip up their base on both sides, and that's just not helpful. But it definitely still is not. As I mean we phrase this, the vast majority of Americans are concerned about climate change.
The vast majority of Americans, like almost eighty percent, want more support of clean energy, but we aren't seeing that reflected in the political actions right, both at the federal level today and at the state level in many areas.
So there's a lag.
There's a political lag from where the constituents really are, where the action is.
And the sad thing about that is that people give up and they go, I give up. I can't you know, they move into their little bubble and do nothing, and you don't want that. So I here's my question to you. What when you you and your volunteers go talking to communities and you're in large communities and small I think a lot of the people in the underschool what can I really do? Is it really it's above anything I can control because of the unfortunately the bureaucracy of layers
that change policy. What can people, individual people do or small groups of people do in their own communities, because there's really grassroots this is where you can make the biggest steps. What can they do? What simple steps? Would you say?
So while you say that people are eager to do things that I would say that while people are concerned, they rank it quite low on their hierarchy of what when they go to vote, So it may be fourteenth, seventeenth, twenty ninth, so hello, it needs to get high.
It needs to be one of the first.
Things that you say is important to you when go to vote, because it impacts the things that you do care about most. Your family's health, your job, you know, the safety and viability of your community. Immigration is greatly impacted by climate change. So anything you care about almost I mean, I know, I'm making a blanket statement is impacted by climate joints, and we have to help people connect those dots and bring it much further forward. It's
also a topic that's not spoken about a lot. Most people don't hear it spoken about very much at all, and so they aren't aware of just how strong the support is amongst others to have climate action to become a safer situation, and so raising your voice talking about it is one of the most important things you can do.
Taking action on a local basis. There's all sorts of ways of getting involved in helping smart smart and I'm gonna say smart not just willy nilly action at the local basis, from helping to ensure there's enough of a green canopy and areas that currently are more exposed because that is one way of mitigating that extraordinary heat that's coming, to helping local regulations on water and land usage and even on clean energy access and construction to enable that transition,
because sometimes we need to do an investment up front to have a lot of savings on the other side, and that's been a real hiccup for people who aren't willing to make that investment in order to get those savings. But that's where governments and policymakers can really play an important part. But only if you raise your voice and say it's important. And I want to just call out Texas for a minute, because in Texas is a really interesting place right now. They are the number one producer
of renewables. It's like they are the powerhouse of the country right now, which is kind of shocking. But in solar and when batteries, they are just making it happen. And part of that is that they are deregulated energy market and they really allow the market to push things forward, and when solar and battery are pretty darn and expensive and in many places less expensive than the fossil fuels.
So there was a real move a foot this just last month to kind of corral the growth of renewables, saying, whoa, we can't let that happen. We have to boost fossil fuels and hinder renewables. And it passed one part of their legislator, but didn't make it over the finish line. And at the same time, what did make it over the finish line, and let's see if it gets vetoed is support of clean energy for distributed energy on rooftops.
So interesting?
What made that happen?
That had to be pushed back from businesses and rate payers and numbers are saying, hey.
It's going to be more expensive. What are you doing? Stop?
And it's the pocketbook.
It matters economics, and there's the bottom line, and the constituents' desire to have this.
Energy was strong enough to stop this political push.
It's interesting, correct.
And we'll see if it's stay stout next year it could be back.
But I thought it was a fascinating tale because I don't know that that could have happened five years ago, ten years ago. I think it's because clean energy now it's something people desire and is less expensive and gives all these added benefits, and people are recognizing it.
I think people just need to realize and understand the benefits and that it's not beyond them that they have to be part of a you know, part of solving it. I mean, you know, apathy goes nowhere, advocacy does. And you don't have to be an activist. You can be an advocate and say I support it, but you know, it's important to have awareness. I think that what might be helpful on your website. It would be really good
to see some books suggested reading on this topic. I am, as we were talking, one of the people I wish and I'm going to ask you about environmental people in time you'd love to have met. I would love to have met Rachel Carson, Oh, yeah, who wrote Silent Spring, and she ended up about pesticides and the impact on health and later died of cancer. And we know that
the use of pesticides does directly impact your health. And I have you know, I am a breast cancer survivor, so I always wonder, you know, even though I have the genetic gene if the air in New York after September eleventh augmented the situation because it was very toxic air and a lot of people developed cancer after that. And I always wonder because I was living fairly close to ground zero on fourteenth Street, So you wonder about that,
but I'd like to have met her. But I think you know, I've made a note to read that book. I've actually never read it. I've only heard about it, which is why I thought reading lists would be helpful to understand the impact. Who what, Who in the world of environmental advocacy or activism would you like to meet and why or do you respect? Right now? Why?
Wow, that's a tough question.
Well, one I would.
Say is Heyhoe, Catherine Hayho Okay, the chief scientist of the Nature CONCERNCY. Now, she is a climate scientist who is also an evangelical that she hails from Texas. I think she was Canadian originally, but now she's been living in Texas and she is one of those people who can connect the dots in a really great way. I mean, she's a scientist, but be she has the compassion to reach across the aisle, to reach people who see things differently, and to even reach to and evangelicals, which is a
group that has historically uh to embrace climate change. Yeah, and in some cases reticent to even believe that. You know, the Earth is as old as many scientists say it is. But think it'stead that I believe started like around two thousand years ago. Any of your evangelical listeners can correct me, which which makes it hard for some of our slides, because we go back and rush, you know, eight hundred thousand years ago, twenty thousand goes to how aberrant today
is to help them understand. But Katherine Hahoe has a book called Saving Nature, which is a wonderful book. And Catherine herself is just a force of nature and one that is so well respected on the international stage, so she would definitely be someone I interested.
I'll look her up. I'm not familiar with her.
And if you think about what we're doing, fossil fuels are just bits of plant and animal manner that fell to the earth millions of years ago, got silted over and with time heat and pressure pulled deep underground and turned into pools of elemental carbon, which we call oil, natural gas, and coal. It was deep underground, and then humans came and said, really rich and energy portable, really storable, I'm going to use it, and they created this vibrant
economy that we all have benefited from. But they were taking in that carbon that was deep underground over millions and millions of years. I started pumping it up in the atmosphere at alarmingly fast rates, as much as forty
tons of carbon every single year. So that is upsetting the balance that always existed, and I don't think people have computed that in their brains that what we've done is kind of push nature out of the balance that has existed since human civilization has been on the planet.
Actually, it's a simple in summarizing that. It's an imbalance of nature when nature becomes inbound, and if you look at it, it's like your body. When your body becomes toxic and imbalanced, you get sick.
Yeah, I guess you would would say that. I guess what I would say is we're putting it into a different balance, and one that our species isn't suited for, because nature goes in and out of different balances all the time. And the fact that she happens to have lingered at the sixty degrees fahrenheit kind of typical temperature for the last ten thousand years was lucky for us because it's really good for our species. But it's not like that's where nature wants to revert back to. So
if we knock the temperatures up to higher temperatures. It's not like nature wants to come back to that balance point. So I guess, I guess you're right and thinking that we're making her sick, But I think it's more that we're knocking her into a space that is no longer suitable for us.
But that's a great way to explain it to people that it's beyond them for some when you get into science and the word fossil fuel, which I quickly looked up while you were talking, because there are a lot of people who don't know what fossil fuel is. It's you know, there are terms that are confusing, which also would be helpful, is like what the terms mean, because I looked up a few while we were talking, because you want to use them correctly, but you want to
better understand what carbon emissions is. You know, it's bad, but what really is it? You know, how is it? How is it created? And why is it bad? You know, because people talk about cows and the carbon emission, you know, on and on and on, and I think, uh, delineating it and explaining it, which you can do through communication, is critical because otherwise people kind of shut down because they don't understand right, well.
So let me let me then give your audience a tiny little bit of knowledge on that. So, sure, greenhouse gases are critically important to making the planet habitable. Without them, were totally frozen. But they only make up a teeny tiny portion of our atmosphere, less than one percent. And when we talk about green house gases, primarily are talking about carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and even water vapor,
which goes up and down really really fast. So without these greenhouse gases, as I said, we wouldn't have enough of the solar radiance captured to make us livable. And because there's so few of them, when we add to them by burning fossil feels really fast.
We're kind of we call it thickening the.
Blanket, making them more insulating, if you will, so let me rephrase this, Let me stop.
This isn't good. Let me rephrase this.
Okay, So let me explain what greenhouse gases are.
Greenhouse gases are literally a tiny.
Portion of our atmosphere that is comprised of these specific gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitros oxide, and even vapor. Out of them, we would have a frozen planet. But when we add to them, they simply do their jobs too well, and that heats up the earth further and adds energy into our climate systems.
You did a very good job explaining it, and I think you know we were cutting towards the end of the conversation here, but I think it's important to underscore a couple of things. Kathleen begins you. You had a prior life. It was successful. You chose to move into another dimension of it through your volunteerism, which I think is really in your community activities that you did after you left your full time job to care for your family.
You found a purpose and passion to help create conversations around something that is important to all of us, which is climate change. It's not political, it's not actism. Its awareness and advocacy to help people in different communities understand that climate change is going to impact you everyone, all of us, whether it's your health, your safety, your environment, your pocket book, your ability to find work if you are going somewhere and the jobs are ount because people
go elsewhere, it basically affects your life. And if you think it doesn't, you really are mistaken. And it's time to understand it. Even if you understand it in the basic way, like you explain that, it is important because even long after you and I are gone, you've got children. It will impact them. And really, at the end of the day, you know, you want to leave the world in a better place.
Yes, indeed, I think all of us want to leave the world at least as good as we were given it for our kids exactly. And that's a universal feeling really across the island and across the and I think that is one of the driving forces that gets people to the table to understand this risk.
Right well, you know, thank you for making the comedy, pushing the conversation forward, because without that important skill of communication, it would just go under the you know, into the heap, as they say, with with other waste and things that people do. Oh, that's messy. I don't want to talk about it. No, it's not. It is messy, and you do want to talk about it. And sometimes it's very important to talk about very messy, difficult things so that
we can understand how they impact us. So we've been talking to we're going to you know, Kathleen Biggins, who has founded Sea Change, It's Sea Dash Change Conversations dot org. It is a nonprofit and you can actually go on the site and ask to have a speaker come to you. You've talked to twenty two thousand people in thirty thirty three states. It looks like it looks like Alabama needs some work here, Alabama and most of the Midway in the Rocky Mountains could use some help. But it's good
to see how far you have come. Congratulations on this, and I wish you all the best moving the conversation forward even more.
Oh, thank you, Melanie. It's been a.
Pleasure, absolutely so you've been listening to Fearless Fabulous you. I will post this show on my site, my page and on LinkedIn and everywhere else to share it with you as well. And I hope this has really raised your awareness but also your idea of why it matters. Because it does. And as I always like to say on the show at the end, you know you have one life. You can choose to live it on your
terms or on terms that people set for you. I chose a long time ago to live on my terms and I choose fearless and fabulous, and I hope you do too. Thank you, Thank you.
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