In a session from our 2024 Symposium, this panel discusses how policy, technology, and leadership can drive climate action, exploring the roles of federal and state initiatives, the impact of emerging technologies, how uncertainty will shape our decisions, and strategies for accelerating the transition to a net-zero future. Moderator Dahvi Wilson (Founder and President, Siting Clean) talks with Kate Marvel (Senior Climate Scientist, Project Drawdown & NASA), Leaf Van Boven (Professor and Chair, Dept. of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder), and Ana Unruh Cohen (Senior Director for NEPA, Infrastructure and Clean Energy, White House Council on Environmental Quality). The panel is introduced by Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of The Institute for Science & Policy.

Watch a video of the panel discussion on our YouTube channel.

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Symposium 2024: The Future of Climate Policy

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: Welcome to the climate panel for the Institute for Science and Policy’s annual symposium, where we’re talking about the future of science policy. I’m Kristan Uhlenbrock, the Executive Director of the Institute. I am thrilled to close out our symposium with a really thoughtful panel – one I think many of us spend a lot of time thinking about – the future of climate science and climate policy. 

 We have four great guests joining us. We have Kate Marvel, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and also affiliated with Columbia University. She recently served as a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown. Dr. Marvel’s research focuses on climate modeling to predict Earth’s future temperatures. You may have seen her TED Talks or other public engagements, and she’s a great public speaker. Kate, I saw you have a new book coming out soon: Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet. Looks like that’s coming out next year. Thank for being here today. It’s nice to have you. 

KATE MARVEL: Thank you for having me. 

KRISTAN: We also have Ana Unruh Cohen, the Senior Director for NEPA, Infrastructure and Clean Energy at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Ana has spent more than two decades in Washington, D.C., working on federal climate and energy policy. She previously served as the Majority Staff Director for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Recently, Time recognized her on their inaugural list of the 100 most influential climate leaders in business. It’s great to have you here as well. Thanks for being here.  

ANA UNRUH COHEN: Thanks for having me. 

KRISTAN: Fabulous. And then a dear friend of ours and close ally right up the street here in person we've worked with before is the lovely Leaf Van Boven,  who is a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado - Boulder. He directs the Environment, Decision, Judgment, and Identity Lab and co-directs the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change. Leaf’s research integrates social, environmental and political psychology.  He has an amazing number of publications. I'm often looking to his research in the work that I do. Leaf, it's lovely to have you join us for something again. Thanks for being here today. 

LEAF VAN BOVEN: Great, thanks for having me. 

KRISTAN: Finally, our lovely host and moderator today is a longtime strategic council member of the Institute, Dahvi Wilson. Dahvi is the founder and president of Siting Clean, where she co-leads an initiative known as the Siting Clean Collaborative. This initiative connects nonprofit, academic, philanthropic, and renewable energy industry leaders to address local siting and permitting challenges for clean energy projects. Previously, Dahvi served as Vice President for Public Affairs at Apex Clean Energy. Dahvi, thank you for leading today’s discussion.  I know it's going to be fruitful. I'm going to pass this over to you and and look forward to listening.   

DAHVI WILSON:  Thank you. Thanks, Kristan. Yeah, really excited to be here being a part of this symposium and closing you out today. As you heard, we've got some really excellent speakers, and we want to talk today about about the future of climate policy and how science should be influencing that – or might be influencing that – in the future. 

We’ve all spent the last few weeks thinking about what the recent election outcomes might mean for climate work.  I thought we might just start there and get the elephant out of the room. I’ll ask the panel: Are there any big ideas for climate policy that feel more promising or hopeful based on what’s changed? And why might this be a good time to advance those ideas? Ana, maybe we can start with you on this one. 

ANA: Sure, thanks. It’s great to be here with everybody. From my perspective, there are two things to hit on here. First, we really are at the early stages of the impact of the historic investments that have been made as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

We’re just starting to see the beginning of the wave of clean energy manufacturing, which has already attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment and started to create clean energy jobs and help lower costs for families. That boom is already helping to lower costs for clean energy technology as much as 25%.  I think we'll continue to see that pay dividends into the future.  

The Biden administration has taken a government-enabled but private-sector-led approach, and that’s worked. Companies have announced more than $450 billion in new clean energy investment. That gives me some confidence in the durability of this work and the interest in it going forward. 

In addition to private investment, there’s also been nearly $100 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act that has gone into projects across the country. Those projects are going to help communities figure out solutions to their unique climate challenges and needs. So I think of it as throwing a big rock into a pond. The ripples have just started, and we’re going to see how far those go. 

Part of that was investment in the Inflation Reduction Act.  It included a billion dollars in the to hire staff and build out technology to support those reviews. Then here at CEQ, we have been working to modernize our NEPA regulations following the 2023 amendments. 

 Because of the administration’s focus on permitting as well as these additional tools that have started to come online, we’re already seeing progress. Environmental impact statement review times have come down by six months compared to the last administration. I’ll just wrap up there, because I know many in the audience have heard about permitting reform and potential legislation. We’ll see what Congress does here in the coming year. But to build the clean energy infrastructure we need, government at all levels needs to prioritize it and provide the capacity to review and build projects. Most importantly, we need to make sure these projects happen in a way that communities can accept and embrace. That’s our goal. 

DAHVI: Thanks, Ana.  Just as you are referencing, the work that I'm doing right now is focused on mostly local governments that are making critical decisions about utility scale, clean energy siting and permitting. But also some of the state governments that will determine who has the authority to decide and how those processes happen. There’s a lot of opportunity at the local and state level, regardless of what’s taking place at the federal level, so we’ll definitely stay busy over the next few years. No matter what.  

Leaf, how about you?   Do you have anything you'd add  to this topic? 

LEAF:  I'm actually feeling a bit of hope just hearing what I've heard so far.  I think it might be helpful if I start by situating the sort of work that I do and where my expertise lies. So I’m a social psychologist. I study what ordinary people believe, why they believe what they believe, what their attitudes are, and how they make decisions on divisive topics. In my lab, we try to understand why ordinary citizens respond the way they do to challenging issues, whether it’s COVID, climate change, or political divisions.  

There are three things we know about public opinion that give me a lot of hope for what might happen in the near future. One of the things we know is that the vast majority of people believe in climate change; recognize that climate change is caused by humans;  think that if we reduce carbon emissions, we would address climate change; and also experience some degree of concern that climate change impacts are already happening. 

 Now when I say that the vast majority of people believe this, that’s especially true among Democrats, but it’s also true among Republicans. Data we’ve collected, both during the Biden and Trump administration, shows about 85% of Democrats hold all of these beliefs, and about 65% of Republicans do. So the first thing that gives me hope is that people on both sides of the political spectrum recognize the reality of climate change. 

 Having said that, there are a couple of qualifications. When you ask people what other Americans believe, they dramatically underestimate how widespread the belief and concern about climate change is.  So I just told you that it's like 85 percent and 65 percent or so for Democrats and Republicans. People believe that it's about only 55 percent of Americans who recognize the reality of climate change. And if you ask them about Democrats and Republicans specifically, they really get Republicans wrong. They think that the minority of Republicans believe in climate change. So in other words, they think most Republicans are climate change skeptics. But that just doesn't show up in the data. So on the one hand, there is this widespread belief and concern about the need to address climate change, recognizing how we could do it.  

Other the other hand, there’s this collective misconception that people are not concerned. There’s even a misconception that people are more divided than they really are.  And that then presents an opportunity. If we can correct those misperceptions, if we can better inform the public, policy makers and everyone involved in these conversations, about how widespread recognition of climate change is, that provides us with a real opportunity moving forward. 

I have a lot more to say about different data points, but I'll leave it there for now. 

DAHVI:   That's great. Thank you. Yeah, we'll come back to talk a little bit more about the false polarization issue in just a moment. But Kate, I would love to hear what is giving you hope about opportunities for the future. 

KATE:  One thing has not been changed by the election results is the molecular structure of carbon dioxide. It will continue to be a greenhouse gas and will continue to trap the heat coming from the planet . In the physical sciences, our results are largely unaffected by who's in charge. They’re based on physics.  

 They're based on concepts that we have understood for hundreds of years. I think, as we look toward the future, there are going to be challenges and opportunities. This is an exciting opportunity.  I'd love to hear more from Leaf about his work and what he's thinking about. 

That said, I think this moment presents both challenges and opportunities. For a long time, the way scientists engaged with policymakers and the public was, if not flawed, very circumscribed.  Pre- 2018, the only story that was allowed to be told in popular media was, “Is climate change real? Let’s hear from scientists who say it is, and one person who says it’s not. Let’s watch them fight.” That’s a boring story. I don’t want to tell do it anymore. 

There was a brief period where the only climate change story that could really be told was one of apocalypse and inevitability. And I don’t like that story either. I understand why people shut down. People shut down when they’re being preached to or told there is no hope. 

I think we now have an opportunity to think about how we tell new stories. How do we communicate the science? Not just to high-level policymakers, but to people on the ground – people who are being affected by climate change or are already affected, which is honestly everybody. 

DAHVI: Yeah, that’s great, thank you. Thinking about telling new stories feels like a perfect way to pick up the thread Leaf left us with about polarization. So we’ve mentioned the concept of false polarization – the fact that, although evidence shows Americans overwhelmingly understand that climate change is real, there’s still a broad assumption that we are deeply polarized on this issue. That assumption of polarization can actually become a barrier to progress, specifically policy progress. 

So Leaf, do you mind talking a little more about what opportunities you see for decreasing polarization on this issue? Maybe storytelling plays a part here. 

LEAF: How much time do we have? I’ve been in the weeds on false polarization topics for a while, and I think it’s worth stepping back and looking at issues beyond climate. Climate has additional complexities, but let’s start more generally with how divided Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, are within the U.S 

Looking at nationally representative survey data going back to the late ’60s – on issues ranging from urban unrest to school busing, the USSR, affirmative action and so on – we do see genuine divisions in in ordinary people’s stances. But we also see that people believe those divisions are about twice as large as they actually are. It’s a pervasive feature of the way Americans see themselves: we think we’re more divided than we really are. 

What’s additionally interesting about that is that, over time, while actual polarization has increased somewhat, perceived polarization has grown even faster. So it’s not as though we’re accurately seeing polarization now. We’re always exaggerating these differences. And that creates a huge barrier to addressing divisive issues. In many ways, climate change is not so different from COVID, affirmative action, healthcare, or economic inequality. These are all things we believe divide us more than they actually do. 

 Part of the reason is that the stories that we hear are really about division.  Everyone loves to blame the media, and I’ll join in a little. It’s just not very interesting to say, “Yeah, most people agree, everything thinks we should do something about this.” That’s less entertaining than hearing about disagreement. So yes, as Kate mentioned, when we hear about issues in the media, we often only hear extremes, not representative samples of what ordinary Americans believe. 

There’s a real opportunity to correct those misperceptions and an urgency to do it. One area where we do see dramatic polarization - where people aren’t wrong - is something we call affective polarization. That’s about how much we like, trust, or feel warmly toward people on each end of the ideological spectrum. People will routinely say they dislike, distrust, or feel extremely cold toward people with different ideological views. They’ll even say things like, “I wouldn’t want my child to date someone with that political perspective.” Something we’d never say about other groups, but somehow it’s okay when it’s about political viewpoints. That’s a critical challenge we need to address and it fuels those other misperceptions. 

DAHVI: I’ve experienced that. I started in the clean energy industry in 2012, and in those days, community hearings about permitting projects were contentious but people relatively well-behaved.  We started to see first it really deteriorate online. People in comment threads and chats would become very aggressive towards each other very rapidly. And then we started seeing that show up in the actual hearings in person as well.  It feels like that's been getting worse in the last ten years. Is that what your research shows?  

LEAF: Like many things, it’s complicated. But yes. It has gotten worse in terms of what people say about the “other side.” What is also happening is that political and social conflicts are becoming normalized at the level of mean-spiritedness rather than thoughtful engagement. 

 So this idea that we can engage on ideas where we disagree, but still have a set of shared values – and a sense of community and commonality – that's starting to wane. That’s a real problem we need to address collectively.  And in the context of climate change, even though polarization is exaggerated, it still fuels the way we debate and interact with each other.  So each side digs in their heels and feels like they can't give anything. Because if they give in, they're surrendering and the other side is going to take advantage of them. And we're really kind of losing the sense of collaborative disagreement and that communal sense of purpose.  

DAHVI: That’s actually a good segue into our next question. We have seen some exciting examples of Republican leadership and solutions at both the state and federal levels. Do any of you have favorite stories or examples of Republican-led climate leadership that might highlight opportunities going forward? 

ANA: Dahvi, maybe I’ll jump in with a bit of my past experience in Congress that came to mind as we were talking, as well as some of what we’ve seen during the Biden administration. As Kristan mentioned, my last role in Congress was as staff director for the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Select committees are special committees created to focus on a specific issue or investigation. They operate alongside the standing legislative and appropriation committees in Congress. 

Our job was to examine the climate crisis in a cross-cutting way. The committee included Democrats, and the Republican caucus appointed their members as well. The senior Republican was Garret Graves, and the chair was Kathy Castor from Florida, who was my boss. We found a lot of common ground on the challenges America faces, whether from the energy side or the climate impact side. 

In our hearings, we had constructive engagement on the problems we were facing. However, the challenge often lies in moving from identifying problems to agreeing on solutions, which is where the two parties tend to divide. Having started in D.C. as a newly minted climate scientist in 2001, I’ve seen a lot of changes. It used to be, as Kate said, that we were still debating whether the phenomenon was even real. 

Now there’s a group of Republicans who recognize the undeniable nature of climate impacts. They’re experiencing them in extreme rainstorms, heatwaves and other events. Republican lawmakers and elected officials, regardless of their level, have to respond to their constituents who are asking for help. Because of this, we’re in a better place now, where we’re not just fighting over the science and are finding some common ground. 

I hope that pragmatic strain of the Republican Party continues. Independents also play an important role in understanding the science and advocating for solutions. We have to keep working to find areas of policy agreement. We’ve had some success, particularly on resilience-related measures. During President Trump’s first term, for example, Congress passed legislation in 2018 that helps communities prepare for extreme weather before it happens. This was a Republican-led program now implemented at FEMA. 

Later, in 2020, when Democrats regained control of the House, there was significant engagement on energy innovation. At the end of 2020, as part of a large omnibus appropriations package, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2020. This authorized several clean energy programs at the Department of Energy, which were later funded through the 2021 infrastructure law. 

One less visible but notable success involved EPA rules addressing certain coolants with greenhouse gas properties. This effort ties to the Montreal Protocol, a global treaty originally aimed at addressing the ozone hole. Under the Kigali Amendment to that treaty, there was international agreement to phase out these chemicals. Remarkably, there was bipartisan agreement in Congress to support this phase-out, driving innovation toward alternatives with less warming potential. The Senate even ratified the Kigali Amendment, a rare bipartisan achievement in that era. 

There are still ways to find common ground and work together. For example, much of the investment from the Inflation Reduction Act is flowing to red states. Governors and local leaders in these states are actively working to attract clean energy investments to boost economic development. I know many in the audience may be concerned about the future of the IRA, but we’ve already seen encouraging signs. 

Earlier this year, 18 House Republicans wrote to Speaker Johnson urging him not to repeal all of the IRA energy tax credits. Governors in states like South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Georgia are competing to bring clean energy projects and investments to their communities. This shows that people recognize the potential of these policies as economic and job drivers and want to see that momentum continue.  

DAHVI: Thanks, Anna. Kate, do you have anything you'd like to add? I'm thinking about some of Ana's stories there and wondering if some of those examples are reliant upon different ways of talking about solutions and policies.  

KATE: I'm going to steal this from somebody - I forget who said it - but the problems are getting worse, and the solutions are getting better. I think that’s absolutely true. If you had told me at the beginning of my career how cheap wind and solar would become, and how salient this issue would be with a large portion of the public, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. 

I would’ve thought that was way too optimistic. So, I think it’s undeniable now that we can talk about mitigation in a way that’s truly either bipartisan or even broader than bipartisan. We can talk about mitigation in terms of the range of options we have. In the National Climate Assessment that came out last year, where I was involved in the leadership team, we included a mitigation chapter. That chapter presents options—trying to be policy-relevant but not policy-prescriptive - laying out things that could be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

I think being able to tell a proactive, positive story, even amid the stories of destruction and doom, is a very powerful tool to have in our toolkit. 

DAHVI: Thank you. How about switching gears a little bit? How about the industry side of things? Are folks seeing exciting opportunities coming out of the energy industry or other industries that we should be thinking about and focusing on in these next several years? 

ANA: Well, Dahvi, climate change solutions really depend on energy change solutions. Kate pointed out a really important one: the dramatic drop in the cost of renewables. Back at the start of her career, you probably wouldn’t have thought we’d have these great big batteries to store electricity and make wind and solar into on-demand energy drivers. 

One of the things I’ve been working on a lot during my time in the Biden administration is geothermal energy. I think it’s a great example of an up-and-coming clean energy source that can be delivered on demand and serve as more of a baseload option. There’s a lot of exciting technological progress in this space. What’s also great about geothermal is that geoscientists, engineers, and even folks from the oil industry - people I’d call rednecks, from my time growing up in Texas near the oil fields - can bring their skills to this industry. Many geothermal companies are targeting workers with experience in oil fields and saying, “Hey, come work with us on geothermal.” 

It’s been exciting to see this development during my time in the administration. We’ve been doing as much as we can to support geothermal energy, especially since many of the best geothermal resources in the U.S. are out west on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management has been focusing on this. Just in October, they approved a project called the Fervo’s Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah - just a little north and west of Denver. This project will use innovative technology to generate up to 2 gigawatts of baseload power. 

For those who might not know, 2 gigawatts is equivalent to about two nuclear power plants and could supply electricity to up to 2 million homes, if that helps as a metric. Along with approving that project, there was also a recent lease sale - the second-largest ever - and it marked a big jump from the year before. That’s a testament to both the technology proving itself and the growing need for electricity. 

It’s great to see all of this coming together for a clean energy source with so much promise. Our team has also been working on streamlining the permitting process. We’re helping with NEPA reviews and other tools to speed up identifying geothermal resources and meeting the requirements for companies looking to develop new plants. I’m very excited about geothermal and have enjoyed working on it over the last couple of years. 

DAHVI: Thank you. Does anyone else have contributions on this one, or should we move to the next question? One thought I have is that the technologies are good, and we’re seeing an increasing diversity of technologies becoming available within the clean energy space. But all of them face various forms of pushback or resistance because siting these projects is hard. These technologies are often large infrastructure projects, which almost always come with some pushback, particularly from the public. 

This is especially true in communities where people are concerned that introducing these new technologies might change the identity or nature of the place where they live and really affect their sense of place. Leaf, we didn’t prepare for this, so feel free to pass if you’d like, but I’m wondering: do you have any research from your work that could offer some thoughts on how to move forward with these siting challenges and address public acceptance for these kinds of projects? 

LEAF: Sure. So yeah, we have some work that we’ve been doing for a couple of years that’s somewhat adjacent, focusing on trying to understand the basis of public receptiveness to new technologies. We’ve been looking at everything from lab-grown meats as low-carbon protein alternatives to carbon removal, nuclear energy, and different kinds of more natural afforestation strategies. Part of what we’re drawing on is research in public risk perception from the 1980s and what happened during the debates around nuclear energy. 

One key takeaway from that era was recognizing that the way the public thinks about the benefits and risks of a technology doesn’t always align with the way engineers think about them. For example, when it comes to technologies that are unfamiliar, unknown, or perceived as unnatural, the public often views them as dangerous. That perception can quickly escalate into strong opposition. 

As you were talking, I was curious, because we haven’t specifically looked at geothermal technology, but I can imagine it being a case where the narrative around it matters a lot. Is it presented as a natural technology providing clean energy, or is it framed as an artificial intervention into the way the Earth operates - something that could even “blow up,” maybe literally? The stories we tell and the way people perceive those technologies are really important. 

A bigger issue, which ties into the siting challenges, is that people need to hear from someone they trust. Having someone who can explain what’s going to happen, be honest about uncertainties and impacts, and convey that the benefits and costs are being carefully considered is crucial. The problem, as we discussed earlier, is that there are many people whom the public doesn’t trust. 

Whether it’s at the state, federal, or local level, it’s essential to ensure that someone trusted, who represents the community’s interests, is part of those discussions. It’s a lot to ask of the average citizen to weigh all the information and make a fully informed decision. Most people don’t have the time in their day for that. I know I don’t. So whether it’s government or business, trust plays a key role in how we make sense of new technologies, how they’re implemented, and whether they perpetuate historical inequities. These are all critical issues that need close attention to better understand and address. 

DAHVI: Yeah, and we’ve talked a bit about how this kind of phenomenon is part of the reason why, if we can break down the partisan elements of this work, there could be really significant impacts. We’ve sort of broken ourselves into these tribes that help determine who we trust on different issues. And, you know, Leaf, you’ve said that there’s evidence suggesting that if Republicans start taking some leadership on these issues, it could have a really significant and more rapid impact because of that dynamic. 

LEAF: Yes, indeed. Is that an invitation to elaborate?  

DAHVI: Yes, it is. Please do.   

LEAF: So, I mean, this wasn’t the purpose of our studies over the years, but it was something we noticed again and again: one of the questions we’re interested in is how people respond differently to climate solutions depending on whether they’re proposed by Democrats or Republicans. Take the same thing and just ask the question, does it matter who’s proposing the idea? It kind of harkens back to discussions about healthcare. Does it matter if it’s a Romney healthcare plan or an Obama healthcare plan? 

It turns out that it does. The same applies to climate policy. People are sensitive to where the policy comes from and who’s proposing it. Because climate tends to be more of a central issue and a higher priority for Democrats, when a climate solution is presented as coming from Democratic leadership, Democrats love it. Republicans, not so much. It tends to hover just below 50% support from Republicans. So a pretty big divide. 

When we present the same solution as coming from Republican leaders, Democratic support drops a little, from maybe 85% to around 70%. But Republican support goes up dramatically, from something like 45% to very close to 75%. Again and again, we’ve observed that you can almost eliminate the partisan difference in support for climate solutions when they’re proposed by conservative Republican leadership. 

Part of what we think is happening here, though it needs further study, is that there’s more ambivalence about climate solutions among Republicans in public opinion. What they’re really looking for is, “Do I see someone I trust advocating this solution? Someone I trust to balance all the considerations at play, like concerns about the economy and jobs?” National polling has shown that Republicans tend to poll better on those kinds of issues. 

For all those reasons, if Republican leadership decides to take action on climate solutions, there’s real potential for it to be less polarizing than if Democratic leadership takes the lead. As we like to say, if there’s a will, there’s definitely a way for them to do it. 

DAHVI: Thank you. So we’re talking about channels of information and who different communities trust to deliver that information. I want to shift that a bit to a conversation about the media, where this dynamic is certainly in effect. I’m curious how you all think the changing media landscape might affect the role of climate science and our civil discourse. How do you see this changing our understanding of the energy economy over time? And what’s the role of scientists in navigating these different media channels and the evolving media landscape? 

KATE: So I think the short answer to your question is I have no idea, but I’ll give you a little bit of a longer answer. You know, I feel my age - kids these days and their TikTok. I don’t understand what’s going on, and I don’t understand where anybody’s getting their information. But I do know two things. 

I do know that historically and currently, effective science communication is not incentivized by the academy. It’s seen as something that’s kind of nice to do, something you can do on your own time, but if you’re too good at it, you’re fundamentally a little suspect. Things are changing with the new generation of student scientists coming through, who really do believe that there is a communication imperative. But things are not changing rapidly, and there’s still this historical barrier of attitude to overcome. 

Another thing, looking forward to the future, that I think will be really helpful is engagement. Not just with traditional journalistic media, where a journalist comes and asks a scientist something, and the scientist says something from, I guess, not an ivory tower (I don’t have one of those), but from our privileged position and expects everybody to listen in a one-way dialogue. I think the utility of that is somewhat limited. 

There are opportunities to engage in different community contexts. There are also opportunities to engage through things like art and fiction. We’ve talked a lot about storytelling. Kendra Pierre-Louis, a journalist at Bloomberg, pointed this out to me, and it blew my mind. She said, you know, in the Marvel movies, the villains are often environmental activists. Like, Thanos wants to kill half of the universe to prevent overpopulation because he’s, I guess, an environmentalist? I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention when I watched that movie. 

The point is that we don’t have a lot of compelling climate stories. We don’t have much engagement through fictional media, through film, books, or storytelling. It’s usually either a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or... well, I think that’s basically it. Post-apocalyptic wasteland. 

But as I’ve said before, climate change affects every living thing on Earth. That is an incredible number of stories to tell. Stories that aren’t just gloom and doom, that aren’t just fear and anger, but that touch on the other emotions we can feel about climate change - things like wonder, pride, hope, and love. I think that is a neglected area: how we engage with creators of fictional narratives. 

DAHVI: That's great. I want to stay with you for just a second to ask a follow up, which is... 

ANA: Oh, can I just plus one on the art and culture piece? Early in my career, I spent some time at the Center for American Progress, and one of my favorite panels I put together was about bringing art into this space. Some of you may know Kim Stanley Robinson, the science fiction writer. His Ministry for the Future made a big splash in the last few years. My favorite of his is The Green Earth - if you want something more positive, go back and read that one. It’s a little older, but definitely worth picking up. 

On that panel, I also had a photographer, a documentarian, and a woman working on climate-focused PSAs. It’s such a neglected area - though it’s getting more attention now - and definitely one we need to focus on. As part of that, I posited this idea: what if Ross from Friends had been a climatologist instead of a paleontologist? Would we be in a better place for climate science today? Or now that I think about it, what about The Big Bang Theory? Why wasn’t someone in their gang of friends an atmospheric physicist? 

There are so many opportunities here. If you look at places where we’ve made dramatic social change, TV and movies have often played a big role in that. So I’m glad to see there are some efforts happening in this space, and I wish all the folks working on that the best. 

DAHVI: I heard a great story. I was at a meeting with Professor Jeffrey Duquette, who was at Ohio State, I believe, and he was talking about a community he had worked with where a coal plant was shutting down. Someone - I'm not sure who - organized a community drama presentation. They did a play about the community holding a funeral for the coal plant. 

What he described from that process was this real need to mourn the passing of something that had been a deeply embedded part of the community for generations. Many people had worked there, and their whole lives had been built around that experience. The community needed that collective reenactment - a fictionalized funeral for the coal plant - to move on and be ready to take on what was coming next. 

It’s a different kind of example, but I thought it was so interesting. But Kate, I wanted to ask you about something you brought up - those value judgments that humans have, and of course, scientists are humans, so they have them too. How do you think scientists should acknowledge the values and beliefs they hold without compromising their scientific expertise? 

KATE: I mean, I’d love to hear how Ana has navigated this in her career. My own personal view is that striving for a perfect, value-free, neutral objectivity is not going to work. If I say I have no values, I have no beliefs, that doesn’t make me objective. It makes me a liar. And I don’t think you should trust science coming from people who are lying about things. 

So, I think we can’t pretend that we don’t have values and beliefs. I’m not sure the right way for scientists to approach these questions is through objectivity, necessarily. I think the right way to address it is through humility. 

For example, I can tell you I know how to solve equations. I know how to do geophysical fluid dynamics on a sphere. Great. That’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. And because most people haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about this - because, it turns out, they have better things to do - that gives me a bit of expertise in this really narrow, defined part of the world. 

But that doesn’t give me expertise in things like what the right thing to do is in terms of policy. It doesn’t make me an expert in how best to communicate about this to achieve a certain goal. It doesn’t allow me to know the things that Leaf just told us, right? We need other areas of expertise. 

If you say, “I am a science robot, and I have no feelings or beliefs or humanity,” people are going to see through that. Nobody’s going to believe you. But if you say, “Here’s what I know, and here’s what I know I don’t know,” that’s an invitation to a conversation. And conversations, I think, are much more productive than lectures. 

DAHVI: Thanks. I was looking back at my notes from the talk last night, because I think this resonates with some of the points you made about bringing your whole self to this work, and also about knowing you’re bringing your area of expertise while being ready to expand into other areas as well. But Ana, go ahead. 

ANA: Well, I was just going to say, when I have the opportunity to talk to scientists who are thinking about engagement and advocacy, I always remind them that scientists are citizens too. And we really need their expertise. 

When scientists succeed, it’s often by being able to say, “This is what I know from my work and area of expertise,” and then connect the dots to say, “That informs me in believing this is a good policy.” But as Kate mentioned, you can’t deny that you have values and opinions and all those things. To the extent that you can be clear about what’s coming from you as a person, a citizen, and a member of a community, versus what’s coming from your work and expertise, I think that’s super helpful. 

We absolutely need those voices. And part of why I’ve chosen my career path, and what I’ve learned along the way, is that we’re in a democracy. It’s messy at times because it’s not just scientific facts - it’s the economic impact, your own values, your group’s values - they all come into play. 

But if we don’t have the expertise from people like Kate and others who are spending their time studying these pieces of science, then our policy decisions are going to be that much poorer for it. 

DAHVI: Go ahead, Leaf. 

LEAF: Yeah, I think a really challenging question that we, especially in the university academic community, need to grapple with is: what are the different perspectives that are represented? How do we humbly acknowledge that we’re bringing particular perspectives, beliefs, and political orientations to the table? Even as we strive to be objective, we acknowledge that those things can affect us. I mean, we definitely know they affect other people. It’s easy to see it in others, but really hard to see in ourselves. 

One of the challenges, I think, for a lot of people when they look at debates in certain settings is that they’re not two-sided, even in contexts where there’s a lot of uncertainty. For example, I just glanced at a comment in the chat about weighing the benefits of addressing climate change versus the economic impacts. There’s a lot of uncertainty there - relevant to many areas in the social sciences - that involves value judgments and analyses of moral principles. Very reasonable, neutral, well-meaning people could and should disagree when they’re coming from different perspectives. 

Part of how we hope to eventually discover some kind of general truths is through a process of disagreement and evaluating claims against the evidence. A fair criticism, and something the public definitely notices, is that many debates in these settings feel very one-sided. 

Going back to the issue of trust, people need to see genuine two-sided debates about values-relevant science in these difficult discussions. It’s not very compelling to skeptics when all the scientists are saying, “We should do X,” but they all share similar political orientations. We need to be mindful not only about humility and disagreement but also about acknowledging that there’s room for debate among people with different perspectives. 

DAHVI: I want to talk a little more about uncertainty, but before I do, I just want to let everyone know that we are watching the chat. We’ll turn to questions in just a moment, so please feel free to add any you have. Before we do that, though, does anyone have comments to share about how you see the role of uncertainty affecting support for climate policies? No takers? Okay. 

KATE: I don’t know how uncertainty affects support for climate policies or not, but I know how I think about how to talk about, communicate, and deal with uncertainty in my own world and my own research. There are some things that we are incredibly certain about, right? We know carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide - we know these are greenhouse gases. We know their concentrations have increased. We know human activities are increasing those concentrations. 

Then there are certain things we know very well because they follow from physics. We know that when the atmosphere gets warmer, we should expect heavier downpours because warm air holds more water vapor. We know we should expect more droughts because warm air is thirstier air. We know we should expect more strong hurricanes, even if we don’t know if we should expect more total hurricanes, because warm water is hurricane food. 

So we know a lot about the very basic physics that underlies this. But as scientists, we have a really hard time talking about stuff we know, because the nature of our jobs is to work on the stuff we don’t know, right? Like, we’re not showing up at work rolling balls down inclined planes and mixing vinegar and baking soda every day. We’re doing stuff we don’t know. 

But at the same time, there is a lot of stuff we don’t know. And the thing I try to stress when I talk to people about this is that the uncertainty is what scares me. If we knew, “Okay, we can increase emissions up to exactly this point, and then we go off some kind of cliff,” that would put us in a very different decision-making environment. If we knew exactly what the consequences would be, it would be different. But we don’t. 

There’s been a lot of attention recently on tipping points - things in the climate system that will break and never be fixed again on timescales relevant to us or human civilization. Things like the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of ice sheets. We really don’t have a good idea of when those tipping elements might be exceeded. It’s very, very hard to get a climate model to tip. It’s very, very hard to understand all the complex processes that might affect something like that. All we know is that the risk of these very bad and effectively irreversible things increases as the temperature increases. And to me, that’s not comforting. 

I’ve often had people ask me, “When do I have to sell my beach house?” And I wish I could say, “At 10 a.m. on January 30, 2032, that’s when you have to sell your beach house, because something’s coming the day afterward.” But I can’t say that. Nobody can say that. We don’t have that kind of information, either at that level of temporal resolution or spatial granularity. 

But that doesn’t mean we know nothing. Uncertainty is not the same thing as ignorance. But there is uncertainty, and we are going to have to make decisions under very, very deep uncertainty. I’ve seen people use uncertainty as a comfort, but to me, it’s the exact opposite. 

LEAF: Kate, I have a question for you based on something you just said. And maybe it relates to the uncertainty and my ignorance. So, in talking about tipping points, you mentioned that it’s very hard to get a climate model to tip. And as a naive person, I might think, well, maybe that means the model isn’t very good. Why should I have confidence in the model? I hear you telling me two things: that the model is good, but there are some things that are really hard to get the model to do that you actually think are real possibilities. Can you help me reconcile those two things? 

KATE: So models are very good at representing the things that we’ve seen so far, right? If you run a model back in time, it will show you the temperature rise, more or less, that we’ve actually observed. Models are very, very good at capturing things that we know. 

When it comes to something like a tipping point, though, we haven’t experienced those things yet. They are wildly out of sample, and they are incredibly complex. The reason models are very good at what they’re good at is that we know the physics behind those things really well, right? Like, models generally project more intense downpours, and that’s because we can write down the equation that tells us to expect more water vapor in a hotter atmosphere. 

The things that models struggle with are generally things that are extremely complex. Take the Amazon Rainforest, for example. The Amazon rainforest is a bunch of stuff growing in a very particular place. It’s fertilized by dust blowing in from the Sahara. The trees in the Amazon make their own weather. They exhale so much water vapor that they prime the sky and draw in the monsoon. 

All of these processes are incredibly complex. They’re not something simple and straightforward, like “warm air is thirstier air” or “warm water is hurricane food.” That complexity doesn’t mean that climate models aren’t credible. It just means this stuff is genuinely difficult to understand. The uncertainty lies in that complexity, if that makes sense. 

LEAF: I just wanted to add a few comments about this. There’s a whole literature on science communication and uncertainty, and during the pandemic, for obvious reasons, our lab group started doing some reading in this area. One of the interesting findings was how people respond to changes in models or predictions. What’s really problematic is when there are changes that aren’t explained. 

If you say, “We thought one thing, now we think something else,” or, “There’s this thing, and we don’t know what’s going to happen,” that diminishes confidence in the model - and in the whole endeavor. But if you can explain, “Here’s what we know, here are the limits of what we know, and here’s why these are reasonable limits that might not be so limiting in the future,” then public confidence actually goes up. People are quite tolerant of changing recommendations if there’s an explanation. 

It’s the absence of explanation - assuming that the public can’t handle the complexities - that ultimately undermines confidence. What you just did, I thought, was a great example. You said, “Here’s something we don’t know, or that’s uncertain, but here’s why,” and, “Here’s how we might eventually overcome these limits of knowledge.” 

KATE: I totally agree with you. I think, you know, my personal experience - and you’ve obviously engaged much more with the literature on this than I have - but just my anecdotal experience is that people, people are curious. You’re right that people are time-limited. People don’t have the time to evaluate and research everything themselves. But if you’re talking to someone about something and you say, “This is uncertain,” they might say, “Oh, why?” 

And if you can engage with that curiosity aspect - which seems, and correct me if I’m wrong, curiosity seems to be one of the last urges that’s relatively depoliticized - I think we’re all allowed to be curious. And that’s a really good fit for scientists because we’re kind of professionally curious. 

ANA: Dahvi, can I add something on uncertainty and policymaking? Because obviously we live in an uncertain world, but a president has to decide whether to sign a bill or veto it. A senator or a member of Congress has to decide whether to vote for a bill or not. 

And so I think that’s one of the reasons why, when we’re evaluating policy, we may be motivated to have more clean energy, you know, to stop the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, stop the heating of our planet. But we don’t know exactly how much we have to deploy, or all those uncertainty pieces. If we have a policy that helps us deploy more non-carbon-polluting technology and also means manufacturing happens in the United States - with tangible benefits like more jobs and economic development - that can really help. That’s why we often try to twin those motivations together. Because ultimately, if you’re the elected official or a staffer to one, you have to help make a black-and-white decision, even in the face of uncertainty. 

DAHVI: Yes. Well, this is great. I want to turn to some of the comments and questions we’ve gotten from participants. One note. It’s not really a question, but I’ve noticed several comments pointing out how the narrative has shifted. It’s less about arguing that climate change isn’t real, and more about other tactics. 

For example, one person mentioned seeing arguments that promote despair or double down on uncertainty as a way to push back against climate policies. Another noted arguments about how the solutions aren’t worth the cost, even if climate change is real. 

From my own experience, on the clean energy side about 12 years ago, there was a gathering of people who would become some of the nation’s largest anti-renewable advocates. They met to talk about how to fight clean energy projects, and there’s a memo from that time online. One of the strategies they discussed was to stress scientific uncertainty. They suggested saying, “The science isn’t clear,” or, “We shouldn’t invest in something when we don’t know.” That comment really resonated with me. 

I’ll turn to a related question. We often hear people saying they need to “do their own research,” and they turn to the Internet for that. How do we handle the fact that influencers on the Internet, who may know very little about the actual science, often have as much or more sway than scientists? Anybody want to weigh in? Leaf, can I give that to you? 

ANA: I was going to say, I’ll jump in. I mean, that’s a crucial question and a really tough one. Science and scientists, even though they’ve taken some knocks over time, are still fairly trusted messengers in our country. That’s one reason why politicians often refer to scientists, even when they aren’t scientists themselves. 

But everything’s evolving so quickly. I have a teenager, so I’ve learned about TikTok based on the things she asks me after seeing them. Thankfully, she’s aware enough to ask, “Is that real?” 

We need to encourage more of that question in everybody - “Is that real?” - and make sure there are places people feel they can go to get those answers. Maybe Leaf can tell us more about how that works. 

LEAF: It’s a brave new world, for sure. I wanted to reiterate something you just said, Ana - that scientists are still, by and large, one of the most trusted groups by the American public. In a lot of the discussions about the declining trust in science, it’s true that levels of trust have been declining. But the degree to which scientists are trusted - much more than other leader groups in society, especially politicians, even from people’s own party - is still extremely high. So we shouldn’t lose sight of that. We should be concerned about the decline, maybe, but we shouldn’t lose sight of that fact. 

I was at a conference recently and listened to several presentations about misinformation, receptiveness to it, and who’s prone to it under what conditions. One point a speaker made, based on a large-scale study, was that the issue isn’t necessarily that people are believing false things. That’s actually a smaller part of the problem. A much bigger issue is that people aren’t believing the things that are true. So it’s less about embracing falsehoods and more about failing to recognize and accept true statements. I think that shifts the conversation a little about what it means to construct a beneficial information landscape. 

The other thing I’ll mention quickly is that we recently published a paper about media consumption, COVID vaccines, and trust in science. One idea we explored was the ideological diversity of media - how much someone consumes media from either liberal or conservative sources, and how much diversity they seek in those perspectives. It turns out ideological diversity has a bunch of benefits. 

It predicts higher vaccination rates, it depolarizes trust in science, and we have some evidence it also depolarizes belief in climate change and attitudes toward climate policy. Hearing different viewpoints on the same issue seems to help people reason more rationally. So instead of saying, “Don’t consume that source, it’s bad,” it might be more productive to encourage people to consume a variety of sources. And if you can fight the algorithms that work against perspective diversity, you might have a winning approach. 

KATE: Can I answer that with a question for Leaf and Ana? How should scientists like me talk about the times when we got it wrong? It strikes me that there are two big ways scientists can get it wrong, and I’ve definitely done both, because I’m a human being. 

One is getting the science wrong. Like, we thought X, but new observations show X isn’t true. The other is advocating for something strongly but being ideologically blinkered. Saying it came from a scientific perspective, but it was really more about my personal beliefs. How should we talk about making those two kinds of mistakes, if we should at all? 

ANA: I mean, I think the last part - “if we should at all” - the answer is yes, we absolutely have to acknowledge when there’s a mistake. I think it goes back to what Leaf highlighted earlier about explaining models. Just being able to walk people through it. 

I know that’s hard in a 30-second TikTok world. Nuance gets lost. But part of telling the story of science is showing that it’s a mechanism to self-correct as we learn more. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet, but laying it out and explaining how the evidence led to where we are now is important. 

LEAF: I think we are often, you know, when we think about changing our minds, we’re thinking in the kind of political sense. And, you know, the anecdotes of John Kerry being a flip-flopper ring true. But that’s a different context, where I think part of the reaction to that is that the reason people are changing their minds is that it’s strategic, and they’re trying to take advantage of shifting winds. 

And that’s a very different circumstance than getting new evidence or even coming to a newfound appreciation that your previous assessment of the evidence was maybe contaminated by ideology or bias. First of all, I think we need a lot more research on these topics - to understand what are the best ways to communicate and acknowledge uncertainty and mistakes we’ve made. 

And how do we admit to those things in a way that can strengthen confidence in the overall endeavor and even in the person who’s admitting to those mistakes and trying to do better going forward? I think the public is generally quite forgiving of those kinds of honest assessments. Again, it goes back to the point you made earlier, Kate, about needing to be kind of humble in our evaluation of the evidence and admitting to what we don’t know. 

We did look at a lot of literature, as I was mentioning, and there’s a lot out there - there are a lot of insights we can glean. But, as I just mentioned, there’s also a lot more that could be done. One of the things I think we would want to invest in as we move forward is really to further develop an understanding - a scientific understanding - of communicating about science and how to do that effectively. 

DAHVI: Thank you. All right, I think we have time for about one more question. We had a previous panel about AI, so maybe I’ll pick this one. AI is going to require a lot of energy, as we know, and it may hinder some of our progress on these climate solutions. Do folks have thoughts on what that means for us and how significant of an issue that’s likely to be as we try to achieve some climate goals? 

ANA: I’ll jump in. It’s definitely, I think, an area that’s getting a lot of attention across the policymaking world, in part because it represents a big change. We’re facing a big change. One of the three major changes I’ve seen in my career is that suddenly electricity demand is going up, rather than staying flat or declining. We anticipated some of this from the electrification needed for decarbonization. But this pulse from AI has, I think, caught people somewhat by surprise. The good news is that many of the companies driving that innovation also want to find ways to power it with clean energy. 

We also have a history of worrying, “Oh no, we’re going to need a lot of energy,” and then as technology matures and things come online, it turns out we don’t need as much as we thought. Right now, there’s definitely a challenge of figuring out how much more electricity we’ll need. That’s a big part of the question. So, people are focused on solving that - bringing generation online more quickly and cleanly to meet the need. 

From my perspective, one of the earliest energy policies I worked on was energy efficiency, and it’s still one of the hardest things to get done in the U.S., even though we have a huge knowledge to draw on. In part, I’m hoping - and I’m seeing some emerging sprouts - that recognizing this near-term demand for electricity will drive us to get a lot more serious and smart about energy efficiency policies and using some of the tools we already have. 

One of my favorite things that my friends at DOE are working on is virtual power plants, which connect smart appliances, solar power, and batteries to build a kind of virtual power plant. I think there’s a lot of promise there. I also hope we’ll see more effort in building efficiency, which could lower demand elsewhere. 

DAHVI: Thank you. So, before we leave, I want to give each of you a moment to share any last thoughts this conversation brought to mind - anything you didn’t get a chance to say yet. We don’t have a ton of time, so keep it a little tight, but I’d love to hear from everyone. Kate, do you want to start with any closing thoughts? 

KATE: I guess it’s become really clear to me that just sitting around waiting for an elected leader, whoever that is, to come along and do everything for us has never been a good strategy. And we should not be doing that. I think we as scientists need to be talking directly to people. We need to let our research be guided by the questions people are interested in. 

And another thing. We need to recognize that people want to be entertained, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally would rather watch John Wick than An Inconvenient Truth, and that’s fine. So realizing that the traditional, very boring, dry, lecturing ways of science communication aren’t necessarily going to cut it anymore is really important. 

DAHVI: Thank you. Leaf, any thoughts from you? 

LEAF: I’ll just add that being in a university setting and around so many young people who are passionate about these issues is actually really inspiring. Hearing more today about the different solutions and seeing younger people with ambition - and a lot more energy, speaking of energy demand, than I have - is such an opportunity. It’s something we should embrace and channel, and I think it’s a real source of optimism. So keep sending students our way. 

DAHVI: Thank you. And Ana, any last thoughts from you? 

ANA: Well, I’ll just add to what Leaf said. I think young people’s passion and understanding of how this issue impacts their future is really driving a lot of action and motivation. And I’ll just close by going back to uncertainty. The thing that drives the most uncertainty in our climate future is actually what we humans choose to do when it comes to our energy use. The cynic might look at that and think, “Oh, gosh.” But the optimist in me looks at that and says, “Okay, it’s in our hands. We can do this.” We all have agency here. 

And that’s what’s really most important. Whether it’s in local communities building clean energy, coming to Washington, D.C., to advocate for federal policy, or just deciding what you choose to do in your individual life, I hope people can feel empowered by that. I hope they can feel that they can make a difference and that they’ll keep trying to make a difference. 

DAHVI: Thank you. Well, virtual applause, I’m sure, from our entire audience here. Thanks so much, everyone. Kristan, welcome back. Thanks for letting us talk about this today. 

For more on this series visit our 2024 Symposium page.