American Scientist

SAVING US: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Katharine Hayhoe. 307 pp. One Signal Publishers, 2021. $27.

Katharine Hayhoe burst onto the science communication scene in 2011 with a book she cowrote with her pastor husband, Andrew Farley, titled A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. With its publication she demonstrated that she is a climate scientist who can discuss the topic of global warming with audiences generally thought to be unreceptive. Because Hayhoe is a churchgoing, involved Christian and a compassionate communicator with a can-do attitude, audiences of evangelical Christians met her with more openness than many in the science community had come to expect. She has continued to discuss climate science with anyone and everyone: She had a PBS television series—Global Weirding: Climate, Politics and Religion—that ran for three seasons starting in 2017, and she put out a podcast with the same title from September 2020 to June of 2021. Her latest book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, was published in September 2021.

Hayhoe makes the case that the biggest hindrances to progress on climate change are that we tend to avoid discussing the topic because it’s polarizing, and we get so overwhelmed by the enormity of the phenomenon that we don’t do much at all to prevent it or reduce its worst effects. Her goal is to give us the resources and pep talk we need to get started communicating about the issue.

Saving Us is particularly timely on a number of counts. The stakes of the problem rise with every passing year. And this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the summary of its sixth assessment report. (The report from Working Group 1 on the physical science basis of climate change came out in August 2021; the report from Working Group 2 on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability was made available in February 2022; and the report from Working Group 3 on mitigation was released in April 2022.) In addition, the Biden administration has put a range of climate change policies on the table, some of which will presumably be brought to a vote in the coming months. The topic is bound to be raised in the lead-up to the 2022 U.S. elections, and during election week, the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 27 will take place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. So this year may offer more opportunities for climate change communication than most—opportunities for which you can prepare by reading this book.

Hayhoe’s main argument is that solving climate change requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, so you, the reader, must get involved. She has divided the book into five sections (titled “The Problem and the Solution,” ‘Why Facts Matter—and Why They Are Not Enough,” “The Threat Multiplier,” “We Can Fix It,” and “You Can Make a Difference”), each consisting of short chapters with subheads—an organization that makes the book easy to dip into. In the first section, she lays out the problem: Arguing with the people who dismiss climate change altogether and dumping additional scary information on people who are already concerned don’t really work, so what will? She summarizes her solution as follows: “Start with something you have in common. Connect it to why climate change matters to us personally—not the human race in its entirety or the Earth itself, but rather us as individuals. . . . Then, describe what people can [do] and are doing to fix it.” Near the end of the book, she condenses this advice, instructing readers to “bond, connect, inspire.”

Hayhoe demonstrates this process, first by describing who she is and what she values, and then by giving examples of how she connects these values to climate change solutions for various audiences. It takes bravery to talk about a polarizing topic to a group that has been stereotyped as hostile or unreceptive to learning about climate change, whether that’s people who work in the fossil fuel industry, a roomful of Texas housewives, or conservatives. Hayhoe tells stories that dispel these stereotypes and explains how she has connected effectively with such audiences, even when she felt intimidated or wary. She emphasizes starting with small, realistic communication expectations. “You’re just trying to open the door, not convince someone to renovate their house,” she says.

Hayhoe knows how to put this big issue into perspective. She also has come up with novel ways of framing climate change and its solutions. “A climate agreement is like an international potluck dinner,” she says in one chapter. “No one person brings a complete meal, but once all the food is assembled, there is supposed to be enough for everyone.” Of course, making sure there is enough clean energy is much more complicated than making sure there’s enough food at a potluck, so Hayhoe goes on to discuss how to approach the challenges involved in getting nations to reach an agreement and honor their commitments.

The majority of people in the United States are concerned about climate change. Hayhoe contends that the reason we aren’t seeing the kinds of sweeping changes we need is that these millions of people are not meaningfully engaging with the problem. Once a topic becomes polarized, people begin avoiding it in polite company. People may slide into despair, be frozen by fear, or become apathetic and fatalistic—psychological responses that are well-documented when it comes to climate change.

These are the people with whom she wants her readers to start conversations, so she goes on to address the reasons people give to explain their inaction and avoidance, and then she gives realistic examples of how other people have gotten started.

As I’ve worked on environmental research, education, and communication over the past two decades, I have found it increasingly challenging not to get disheartened. But hearing how other leaders in this field are processing these feelings and finding solutions has been cathartic for me. And Hayhoe is genuinely inspiring. I didn’t feel overwhelmed at all while reading her book, and I came away with some clear, practical ideas about how I and others can move forward.

Borne out of Hayhoe’s hard work, humble self-reflection, deep scholarship, and experience, Saving Us is a masterful piece of science communication.