Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative The Creative Process

“Getting people to care is the most important thing. I went all the way to the Maldives for research for my book How to Talk to a Science Denier because I wanted to see coral death. I wanted to see the Maldives. I wanted to see the country most under threat from climate change. One of my teachers was a 17 or 18-year-old kid who was the captain of a fishing boat. He said, "Oh, sir, outside the Maldives, no one cares." And that was when I realized that climate denial was not just about belief, it was about caring. He was right. Could you get people to care? How do you get people to care about what happens to the Maldives? They have to go there and meet people and/or know someone in order to care. I've been really fortunate in my life to have had so many teachers in that way, sometimes through short interactions.”

How to talk to a science denier? How do we fight for truth and protect democracy in a post-truth world? How does bias affect our understanding of facts?
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. He has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Tufts Experimental College, Simmons College, and Harvard Extension School (where he received the Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Distinguished Teaching). Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. His books include On Disinformation and How to Talk to a Science Denier and the novels The Art of Good and Evil and The Sin Eater.

“It’s interesting to me that there are things that people have an intuitive sense of and have for a long, long time had an intuitive sense of that sometimes in science, there's been a tendency to say, "Oh, no, no, no. We have a particular way of thinking about things in science and that doesn't fit with it. So let's lock it out," so to speak. So an example of that, well, for example, animism; you mentioned this question of where are their minds? Is it reasonable to think of the weather as having a mind of its own? Is it reasonable to think of the forest as having a mind, so to speak? Well, in these kind of computational terms, yes, it does become reasonable to think about those things. Now if you say then, one comes to that idea from a place of formalized science, but nevertheless, it relates to sort of intuitions that people have had for a long time about that come from that didn't come from that particular kind of branch formalized thinking.”

“One thing I love about living in Crete is that the sense of the presence of nature is always here. I walk out the door and I can see the mountains around the city. I can see the White Mountains (Lefka Ori), which for half the year are covered in snow. I can see the sea. If you walk out in the summer, you're immediately aware of your physicality. You become dehydrated very quickly. It's not necessarily a kind environment for humans. It's not if you engage in any vigorous activity, but it's one that makes you feel vividly alive."

“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”

Can we really end the climate crisis in one generation? What kind of bold collective action, technologies, and nature-based solutions would it take to do it?

Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. A leading voice in the environmental movement, he has founded successful eco-friendly businesses, authored influential works on commerce and ecology, and advised global leaders on economic and environmental policies. As the founder of Project Regeneration and Project Drawdown, Paul leads efforts to identify and model solutions to reverse global warming, showcasing actionable strategies. His pioneering work in corporate ecological reform continues to shape a sustainable future. He is the author of eight books, including Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.