This interview with Radiolab’s senior editor (also my husband) focuses on why the show hasn’t done a story on climate change. It originally ran on May 22, 2014. Since then, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad has spoken the words “climate change” on air . . . as part of an episode on nihilism. Progress? (The show is actually one of my very favorites. You should listen.)
The most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t pull any punches. The globe continues to warm, ice continues to melt at an alarming pace, and the seas continue to rise. Climate change isn’t some distant dilemma. It’s already happening. The science is solid, and the problem is urgent. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri at a news conference in March.
Yet most Americans don’t seem to be all that concerned. According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, only 40% cited climate change as a major threat to the US. And even fewer — roughly a third — listed global warming as a top priority for Congress and the White House.
So what gives? Why aren’t people getting the message? Are we* — the science journalists –delivering it wrong? Perhaps we need more stories, and better storytellers.
“Why don’t you do something about climate change?” I asked my husband, Soren Wheeler. He’s the senior producer of Radiolab, a crazy popular science program that tells some of the most compelling stories on the airwaves.
“Because,” he said, “climate change is the anti-story.”
Naturally, I asked him to explain. Here is an edited version of the conversation that ensued over burgers and beers**.
CW: You told me climate change is the anti-story. What did you mean by that?
SW: Are you sure I said exactly that?
CW: Yes!
SW: Ok. First, we should talk about what I mean by “story.” I mean it has some arc. There are changes in mood or emotion. Something happens. It lands somewhere. It could be a character that needs something and then gets that thing. Or maybe it’s an idea that is out of favor and then it’s in favor.
Radiolab really likes to have a story that is connected to an idea. The story makes you ask a question or gives you some insight, or the idea comes first and the story is evidence for the idea. It’s got to be a tight intimate relationship. Let’s be clear: All of this should be about whether Radiolab would want to do a climate change story. I think there are plenty of outlets that should, could have awesome climate change stories.
CW: Are you going to answer the question now?
SW: Yeah. Stories are better when they’re concrete, direct, immediate, and you can have a vicarious experience. But climate, by definition, is weather spread out over time and over space. So weather is what happened here today. And climate is the average of what happened in the last 200 years across the whole globe. So with the very definition of climate you’ve taken away all of your chance of drama and directness and made it diffuse. I think that’s what makes climate change so hard, or the anti-story.
CW: I don’t buy that. Radiolab finds ways to tell stories about abstract ideas all the time. I don’t see climate as being terribly different from any of the other broad scientific concepts you’ve discussed in the past.
SW: Usually those broad abstract stories have some specific instance. Weather should be that thing for climate. There are some great stories about dudes who fly their planes into the eye of the hurricane to take measurements. But there’s a huge gap between stories that have to do with weather and climate change writ large. People can climb in and be skeptical about whether that’s really climate change or not. They can always disconnect your story from the idea that you’re trying to get across.
When you say, “do a story on climate change,” you mean do a story that communicates the idea that the climate is changing globally because of human actions. I can’t find a story that can get you all the way to that idea compellingly without some gap, like the gap between weather and climate. Someone could jump in and say, “that’s not really a trend.” And if I want to say, “yes, it is,” then I have to go back to the math and the stats, things that have no emotions.
CW: Do you think that Radiolab has some obligation to get that message across?
SW: We don’t have an educational mission. We do documentary news. It’s journalism that doesn’t specifically pursue the “important” social issues of our day. It’s harder to connect with audiences in the way that we want to if the reason we’re doing something is because it is socially important. The reason we do something is because we find it interesting.
CW: So the problem is that climate change isn’t interesting?
SW: No. It’s interesting. I want to do a story on climate change. If it weren’t interesting I would have no desire. It’s a frustrating struggle. We have a particular brand of thing that we do. Our shtick is curiosity and wonder and awe and finding some surprising insight about all of us inside a tiny example. It just happens to be really hard to fit climate change into that model. Where is the awe?
CW: The “awe” is that a single species has consumed enough fossil fuels in just a couple of centuries to irreparably alter the climate of this enormous fucking planet.
SW: I’ll give you that.
But I want to be surprised. If you’re going to write a climate change story, I know already what you’re going to tell me. You can’t surprise me. As a reporter, I prefer to be in a position where I’m asking an honest question, an authentic question that I don’t know the answer to. I might then surprise the listener by what I find. Climate change – I believe in it. So what am I going to do? Go out and shore up my own beliefs in front of people? That doesn’t seem to have emotional power.
Maybe it was wrong of me to say it’s the anti-story, to make some kind of declaration that there would never be a story that could communicate the “global trend caused by humans” idea. But I have not been able to find one.
CW: Isn’t the denialism a story?
You’re on the right track. One way to do a story about climate change is to do a story about why people don’t believe it. Or to do a story where you go deep with a denialist and really try to understand them. And maybe if you’re lucky you lead them through a set of experiences that gets them to, if not totally change their minds, at least question what’s going on.
I’m also interested in the business side of climate change. Is the Arctic melting going to open up new oil drilling possibilities or a new shipping route? McKenzie Funk has a book out called Windfall that looks at the business side. The amazing thing is that once you’re interested in making money, truth trumps politics. The business side gives climate change an interesting reality that can be really surprising. At least right now it feels unexpected.
CW: I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re so talented. I find it hard to believe that you can’t find a way to talk about climate change.
SW: It’s unfortunate that in a transcript no one will pick up the sarcasm*** in your voice.
—
* These days my beat is largely health and medicine, so I rarely write about climate change. But I used to when I was on staff at Earth Magazine.
** Conflicts: I am married to the interviewee, and he paid for my burger, fries, and beer. Actually I guess you could make the argument that Radiolab paid for it.
*** I sound sarcastic even when I don’t mean to. He really IS very talented.
Image courtesy of Local Studies NSW on Flickr
Thank you for this.
You raise a very good question, and the answer here is excellent, because it sure sounds true.
I heard at least 3 good story ideas. I especially liked the one about how climate change deniers prove that they believe in climate change by dint of their attempts to capitalize on it.
But in my reading of your post, an even better answer is “We don’t want to talk about it because it is too depressing.” I don’t blame you. It is depressing.
Nothing we can do will make a change for the better. All we can possibly do is not make things worse, and we are not doing any of those things. Nor will we. We must give up our rich, energy dense lifestyles, and we don’t want to. ALL of us must do it, and we all want someone else to go first. Legislation can only at best slow things down a little bit, and the legislators will destroy their power base if they try to enact anything. The system must collapse. The system will collapse. The system is collapsing (slowly) at this very minute.
This doesn’t make a cheery radio program.
I hope I am not being too much of a downer, I am actually not depressed, just hopeless (in the second-best possible way). I do think though, that it is time that we start being honest with ourselves.
Thanks.
Wait, Radiolab did a story on the very nature of evil that blew my mind. You simply cannot get more diffuse than that. I hear the problem with finding a good narrative – which often stops me from writing about it – but I think Soren is overlooking a few possibilities. For instance, there are some wild tales about what it has meant for scientists or lawmakers to switch sides on the issue or get caught up in the craziness of it. TAL did a great piece with Bob Inglis (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/495/hot-in-my-backyard) and Stephen Schneider wrote “Science as a Contact Sport,” which was a pretty good yarn for an academic. Certainly there must be more along these lines?