A climate Q&A: Why it's hard for human brains to understand climate risk and other conundrums

Editor's Note: An excerpt of this interview appeared in Cognoscenti's weekly Sunday newsletter of ideas and opinions. To become a subscriber, sign up here.

Amy Boyd Rabin, the vice president for policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, likes to joke that she’s an “indoorsy environmentalist.” She grew up in Texas where, she says: “It was either freezing or way too hot to be outside and the venomous snakes, scorpions, spiders and other assorted wildlife really could kill you.” 

Now Amy spends her days thinking about climate change policy. And this week, she wrote a Cog essay about two big climate bills pending before the state Legislature. There was so much goodness that didn’t make it into the piece, that we decided to also do a Q&A so we could continue the conversation.

I think about climate change a lot, and we publish many essays on the topic every year. But it’s also scary and depressing and complicated and (yes) sometimes boring. Lots of climate coverage is head-spinning. Does a regular person actually grasp what a ton of carbon is? Or what 1 inch of sea level rise means? 

Since I read this piece in the New York Times Magazine in 2018, I’ve tried to think about how we, at Cog, can share stories about climate change that are accessible, without dumbing it down or being too Pollyannaish about what’s ahead. I hope Amy’s answers help demystify the topic a bit for you, too. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. – Cloe Axelson

Cloe Axelson: What is the biggest misconception people have about climate policy and/or your work?

Amy Boyd Rabin: Until now, environmentalism has run at the speed of making a good effort. But “good” is no longer good enough and climate science demands more than slow incrementalism, because climate change isn’t a future problem — it's already here. We can see it in the heat waves we’ve had this summer, or the lack of snow last winter. Even if we could stop our greenhouse gas emissions today, the climate is going to keep changing in ways we can’t predict for the next hundred years or so.

What we’re fighting for now is how severe those changes will be and how many people will be killed in the drought, floods, fires, famine and wars that climate instability will kick off. We can still bend the curve significantly.

CA: What should all Massachusetts residents know about what most contributes to our carbon footprint?

ABR: Transportation is Massachusetts’ highest source of greenhouse gas emissions – nearly 40%. We’ve barely reduced the levels since 1990, when we started tracking. Even though cars and trucks are more fuel efficient now than they were 30 years ago – and there are a lot more electric vehicles on the road – we’re traveling a lot more miles. We need to reduce the miles driven and cargo moved, and electrify cars, trucks, trains and planes.

CA: Climate policies at the state level can make it easier for regular people to do their part. Can you give us an example of something that’s worked?

ABR: I think it’s really interesting how state policy can influence consumer choices — making sure that efficient products are available and affordable, and providing education and financing so that consumers can make climate-friendly purchases and decisions.

LED lightbulbs are one huge success story. The MassSave programs did such a good job getting LEDs onto store shelves and into most sockets in the Commonwealth, and they last for so much longer that there isn’t much of that low-hanging fruit left to collect. Now we need to create state policies that do the same thing for electric vehicles and heat pumps, making them the easy and affordable solution.

CA: How do you talk with your kids about the climate crisis?

ABR: I finally had “the talk” with my kids this winter when they, at 7 and 10, asked why we didn’t have big fluffy snow and accompanying snow days anymore. It went better than I had expected. When they were 5 or so, I started talking about the greenhouse effect. We’d lay  under blankets to chat about how plants breathe in the CO2 that we breathe out, how burning fossil fuels let a lot of CO2 out, and it makes a blanket for the Earth. We’d then experience how much cooler it was when we got out from under the blanket.

As they grew up, when we saw cars or trucks driving around belching out thick smoke, I pointed out that the little particles we could see (and many more we couldn’t) went into the air that we breathed, and up into the blanket around the earth. I talked about successes at work – getting a bill passed that bought more hydro and incentivized solar or ensuring that the energy efficiency plans delivered as much savings as possible to as many people as possible.  We talked about why we got heat pumps and cheered as the kWh of solar energy generated on our roof started adding up.

Until January, I hadn’t let them in on the fact that climate change is already here and the changes it has wrought are going to get much worse before it gets better, through feedback loops that scientists are still uncovering. I kept it light and emphasized that, as far as I knew, we would be inconvenienced, but ultimately safe, but that I worried about people who live in places that will be more impacted and have far fewer resources than we do.

I still haven’t told them about all the time we’ve lost — that, despite the science being recognized before I was born, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions didn’t start to decline until I was nearly 30, and the U.S. didn’t ratify a climate treaty until after my eldest was born. I think I need to do more work on my own anger about the time we’ve lost (and are still losing) before I can let them in on that.

I finally had “the talk” with my kids this winter when they, at 7 and 10, asked why we didn’t have big fluffy snow and accompanying snow days anymore.

CA: Is our state on track to meet its climate goals (reaching net-zero emissions by 2050)?  What do we most urgently need to work on?

ABR: I’d really like to be able to answer this question with a “yes” because that’s one of my life’s goals, but my honest answer is that I don’t know. We are on track to just miss our 2030 target of 50% reductions, mostly because of delays in bringing our big Hydro-Québec hydroelectricity purchase onto the grid.

And the hardest work is still yet to come. The 2050 goal is much more ambitious; it requires us to cut our emissions as much as possible and find ways to zero out the rest. It will require digging into reductions in areas like industrial processes, cutting transportation emissions and electrifying nearly every building in the Commonwealth.

CA: What are the biggest barriers to meeting our climate goals?

ABR: The speed with which we need to change doesn’t allow us to rely on normal business cycles — such as only changing an oil boiler for a heat pump at the end of its lifespan. We need to push and accelerate the transition.

But we’re pushing against markets and consumer behavior that make fossil fuel options seem easier, cheaper or safer. Even though they’re not. I can’t imagine that consumers would clamor for the chance to use fossil fuels if we had started with electricity. If electric cars were the norm, no one would switch to a vehicle that runs on small explosions of a toxic, flammable fluid that you must carry gallons of with you everywhere you go and whose price is highly variable. If electric stoves were the most popular choice, no one would want a gas cooktop in their home with their kids breathing in fumes. But since it’s what we’re used to, it’s hard to see it from a different perspective.

CA: What are some of the hardest things about your job? 

ABR: It’s hard for human brains to understand climate risk. The sheer size of the problem and the decades it’s been in the lexicon make it a very different issue than the ones our brains are designed to handle — like escaping an immediate threat from a predator or seeking shelter because we’re cold. Our brains literally aren’t designed to handle the ongoing risk, anxiety and anticipatory grief that working in the climate field creates, so I worry a lot about the mental health and stamina of our movement.

I also understand why the public and mass media don’t like to think about climate or talk about it — I don’t like to either. No one wants to be the downer at the party. But I’ve started talking more about the climate crisis outside of work. I’ve been surprised by the number of my friends who are really interested and have tons of questions, but never knew how to bring it up because they didn’t want to be the downer, either.

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