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Here's some opinions.
What do people believe? Why?
This is an article based on interviews with subjects. This article by no means covers every perspective, but rather is a snapshot of what some people think based on their knowledge and experiences.
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Twice a day, William Wentz walks his dog on the beach by where he lives in South Padre Island, Texas. While he walks, he picks up the trash he finds.
“I think it’s silly to walk by a piece of trash and not pick it up. But I do this almost every day and sometimes it feels like a lost cause,” he explained. “Most people don’t care.”
Wentz, 59, is a logistics manager for a power generation company. His company rewinds the generators that produce energy using fossil fuels and sources like hydroelectric power. The generators that his company manages are a huge part of power production in the United States.
“For someone who has been in this industry for over a decade, I do think we need to work towards using renewable sources,” Wentz said. “But fossil fuels can’t just be turned off.”
Wentz explained that this change is one that has to be done over time.
“Everyone wants to stop with fossil fuels right away and start using renewable sources. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that when you turn your lights on at home or at school, that’s coming from an active generator.”
Part of the reason why fossil fuels are still very important is because they cover the gaps of the short falls in these renewable sources.
“When you don’t have water flowing over a dam, wind blowing through a turbine, or sun on solar panels, you don’t have power,” said Wentz.
State Director of The Nature Conservancy for Ohio, Bill Stanley, agrees.
“A big problem with renewable energy,” Stanley explained, “is that you can’t get power on demand. The sun shines when it shines, the wind blows when it blows.”
Stanley, 52, has been working at The Nature Conservancy for over 20 years. The Nature Conservancy is a global organization that works to protect land and water, provide food and water sustainability, build healthy cities, and tackle climate change.
Wentz and Stanley work in opposing industries: one centered around the continued use of fossil fuels and one that tackles the effects of those nonrenewable sources. Despite differing opinions, backgrounds, and experiences, both agree that climate change is a problem.
“I believe it. I believe climate change is real,” said Wentz.
“It’s happening now. It’s not something that’s off in the future. We’re seeing and experiencing the impacts of climate change all around us,” said Stanley.
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These impacts are nothing new.
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“I’ve been working on projects related to climate change for 20 years now,” said Stanley. “The struggle with this issue is that it was urgent 20 years ago and it’s still urgent now. Why are we not making progress?”
Chris Yoder also emphasized the urgency of the issue: “It’s like watching a train moving down the tracks; you see it in the distance and it doesn’t look like it’s really moving. But if you wait to get out of the way until you see it moving, it's too late.”
In his 45 years of experience, Chris Yoder has seen and done a lot. As Research Director for the Midwest Biodiversity Institute, Yoder has worked on a multitude of projects involving rivers, streams, wetlands, and lakes.
“We’re paying a penalty for climate change in the cost of wastewater treatment,” said Yoder. “This is an indirect result, but it’s another thing to add to the list.”
When it comes to impacts of climate change, freshwater rivers and lakes aren’t typically at the top of the list. But for Yoder, this is his area of expertise.
“All of the implications and impacts of climate change will mean different things to different people depending on what their interests are,” Yoder explained. “So it can be difficult to communicate the meaning of the effects and get people to understand them. For me, as a scientist, it’s based on observation and experience and piecing patterns together.”
And those patterns can be seen in so many places. Take an example from Yoder’s work in the Northeast:
“In Maine, warmer air and water temperatures are a big concern. These warmer temperatures mean that available habitats for cold water species are shrinking. As a result, some of the fish we eat will not be as available because they have such a narrow tolerance for temperature. Their habitats will shrink with the change in water temperature, causing their populations to decrease.”
It can be hard to effectively communicate all of these intricate and related aspects of global warming and climate change, especially when they look different and are happening in different places. Stanley and Yoder embody a different perspective than most. Both have been tackling environmental issues for years and studying the effects and changes our world has seen.
“We live in an echo chamber of our own,” said Yoder.
This is a common phenomenon with issues such as climate change. In news media, echo chambers describe the ways in which beliefs are reinforced and amplified in a closed context where they are not challenged. The news we see and hear, the people we converse with, and the contexts we live and work in often reflect our own ideas, therefore masking other facts and points of view.
Despite these echo chambers, it can still be difficult to get the information we need about some topics. There are myriad news outlets, articles, and reports that compete to share information with the public.
“Any complex issue with science behind it is difficult for the press to deal with effectively. They’re forced to report concisely, and it’s hard to distill it down,” Yoder explained. “And on the other side, with some pieces that are lengthier and well-thought out, the casual observer doesn’t have time to read and understand them.”
This makes it easy for a lot of information to get lost in translation. Oftentimes, the stuff we do hear ends up being extremist.
“One of the real challenges is trying to effectively communicate all of this stuff without sounding alarmist,” Yoder explained. “Alarmism turns people right off––especially the people you have to win over. You have to win over the skeptics,” he emphasized.
Not being able to effectively communicate all of the information can create divisions in people’s opinions on the topic of climate change. Remember Global Warming’s Six Americas? This range of perspectives, while related to a number of factors, can be partially attributed to the information people have on this issue.
A little different from the skeptics are those who may understand and acknowledge the impacts of climate change, but don’t feel that action is important or necessary. Yoder emphasized the difficulty in addressing this mindset: “Until they are faced with the consequences––until they are directly affected––it’s not very real. It’s difficult to get our society to react to something.”
Yoder and Stanley agree that policies are needed to make change.
“There are huge shifts that would need to happen, that do need to happen,” said Stanley.
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“It’s a war of attrition. I’ve never seen a time where people have their minds so made up.”
- Chris Yoder
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Stanley explained that “In the United States, we’re going to need independent and conservative leaders, along with liberal ones, accepting the science and calling for action and change. Without that, I think it’s going to be hard to get that constituency and see those changes.”
But the environment isn’t always the first thing to come to mind when voting for candidates. Cookie Hoffmeyer, age 69, explained how money is a big consideration for her when it comes to voting. For her, climate change falls at a lower level of importance compared to topics like the economy and healthcare.
Hoffmeyer’s life experiences and, in turn, opinions on climate change are very different from Yoder’s and Stanley’s. Thinking about the six perspectives (alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, dismissive), Stanley and Yoder would fall into the alarmed category, while Hoffmeyer is considered doubtful.
“I do believe that the earth is changing, but I think there will be another cycle we’ll go through,” Hoffmeyer said. “Minnesota had one of their worst winters ever last year––they still had snow in June, I think. And this summer we never even hit 100 degrees.”
Yoder would explain this phenomenon differently: “When they say that the average temperature of the world is increasing by as little as a tenth of a degree, I understand what that means. However, to the bystander, it doesn’t seem like much. Certain parts of the earth are getting much hotter than just that overall tenth of a degree, there are outliers that contribute to the overall average.”
Stanley added that “Climate change is about how trends in weather are changing over longer time frames. If you look back over the last couple of decades, you’ll see that average and extreme temperatures are higher. Along with that, rainfall events are increasing and the intensity of hurricanes are increasing. If you look individually at any one of these examples it’s hard to say that’s climate change, but if you look at the trends over time you’ll see that it’s happening and impacting us in really serious ways.”
The changes in these weather patterns all relate back to human activities.
“It’s all about carbon,” Yoder said. “The more carbon we put into the atmosphere the faster this is all going to happen.”
But again, this understanding is not universal.
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“I think it’s a change that was always going to happen.”
- Cookie Hoffmeyer
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This is a huge difference in perspectives for three people who aren’t too far apart in age. Generation can cause disparities in opinions––just think about Baby Boomers (ages 56-74) versus Gen Z (ages 8-25). So why do Yoder and Hoffmeyer, both age 69, have such different mindsets on a topic that has spanned their lifetimes?
Both Hoffmeyer and Yoder grew up in smaller, more rural communities in Ohio; Defiance and West Liberty, respectively. Hoffmeyer grew up on a farm, and Yoder recalls always loving the outdoors. So, education and career end up being defining factors for opinions on climate change.
Hoffmeyer has been working since she graduated high school, and currently works in real estate. Yoder earned a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University, and a M.A. in Zoology from DePauw University. Stanley studied Environmental Science and Foreign Affairs during undergrad at the University of Virginia, and obtained his Masters of Forest Science from Yale University. Both have spent their entire careers studying the environment.
But working with nature isn’t a defining factor for being passionate about the planet in this age group. Joe Bechtel, 60, received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Ohio State University and currently works as a partner manager for a data management and analytics company.
“I don’t think the scientific community is being extreme,” Bechtel said. “I think it’s based on science and this is what science is showing us. Scientists are telling the truth: the impact we’re having on the planet is very significant.”
“Look at the world right now. You can turn on the news any given day and see wildfires, hurricanes––this stuff is every day.” Bechtel explained it like this: “You can beat the shit out of your body forever and ever and it will take it. But then one day, it’s just going to stop. That’s what we’re doing to the planet.”
This isn’t necessarily a new realization, though. Bechtel recalled an instance when he saw the reality of the future in a different light:
“I remember my Geology teacher when I was in prep school talking about the availability of fossil fuels. He was making the joke 40 years ago that ‘I’m gonna drive my car as much as I want because you guys are screwed.’ He was saying that as a Geologist even back then. It was real then, it’s real now.”
There may be distinctions based on our educational backgrounds and careers, but one factor that affects us all in the dispute over climate change is the economy.
Costs and benefits are a huge part of the debate around climate change. Making environmental changes to our lifestyles can be costly, and the benefits don’t always appear immediately.
“The problem with cost-benefit analysis is that it’s always easy to count the cost. It’s difficult to measure the benefits,” Yoder explained.
On top of that, there are millions of people who rely on the fossil fuels industry for their livelihood. Stanley explained it like this:
“There are huge economic forces at play; you’ve got businesses and infrastructures that are highly invested in fossil fuels, whether it’s the power industry or transportation industry. You have wealth tied up in these different investments. We need to make these transitions to renewable energy, but for people that are highly invested in these industries, it’s a hard pill to swallow. How do they come out of it whole?”
Politics, of course, are connected to economic issues. The economy has always been an area of dispute, but climate change has become a highly controversial topic in the sphere of politics.
“There’s a political notion that environmentalism has gotten out of control,” said Yoder. “It’s thought that it’s unnecessarily burdening industry and business and therefore it’s constraining the economy. It hasn’t delivered the benefits everyone claims it has.”
Opinions on climate change like these that are intertwined with politics also have a relation to geographic location. Living in Texas, Wentz has a different experience from those living in the Midwest or on the West Coast.
Wentz explained that “The political landscape has gone too green too fast. I think in the long-run it’s going to hurt liberals by not getting in office. I think the American people––take the Midwest for example––like the green ideas but just not so fast. I just don’t think it’s practical. It’s something that has to be done over time.”
“When they were campaigning,” Wentz continued, “I think the Democrats went way too far with going green, so for people in Texas, who don’t see themselves as being impacted, they’re not going to want to vote these people into office.”
For people who aren’t directly impacted by climate change, it’s easy to keep doing what they’re doing; making lifestyle changes doesn’t seem so important. The solution has often been to fight to convince these people that they are wrong, that they need to make changes. Alternatively, there are the questions of how we make these changes and what happens once they’re made. In all honesty, there are a lot of questions.
But we may be going about getting those answers––and results––the wrong way.
“It’s a lot of work,” Stanley explained. “We get so focused on the urgency and trying to do these quick fixes that we don’t do the really hard work of figuring out what we want to become. And how do we get there without putting people out of business,” he continued. “We almost need to slow down and do something that’s going to be really meaningful and tangible to get real results. It takes some patience.”
Each industry, location, age group, political party, and economic class will have their own ideas and solutions. These differences are natural; based on the knowledge and experiences of the individuals in each group, everyone ends up feeling justified.
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“There’s no instruction book, there’s no history to go back on. This is the first time we as a planet are going through this.”
- Joe Bechtel
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Right and wrong, good and bad aside, there are divisions in our opinions. We tend to see those who are not with us as being against us. How would things work if we viewed our differences as disagreements and not dividers?
“I don’t think we spend nearly enough time as environmentalists painting the picture of the future,” Stanley said. “We spend a lot of time trying to shame people and scare people into doing the right thing and I don’t think that’s motivating.”
To end, I asked these very different people what they would want others to know about climate change and helping the environment:
“There’s a lot we can do to slow it down or reverse it if we have the will to do it,” Yoder said. “It sounds like a cliché, but get involved. Be informed voters. Have conversations about this stuff.”
Stanley also emphasized the importance of awareness: “The big thing is leadership and voting; understand the perspectives of the leaders you’re voting for, and choose those who support taking more action.”
“I try to be conscientious with my energy usage at home,” Hoffmeyer said. “I also recycle everything I can.”
“If people realized how much garbage that they use in a week, they’d be astounded,” Wentz expressed. “We don’t notice what we’re doing and what we’re using.”
Whether it’s picking up trash while walking your dog, using energy efficient light bulbs, or adjusting your thermostat throughout the day, on an individual level, there are many things we can do. Simple things like these can make a difference.
Stanley also highlighted some more substantial efforts:
“One that’s a little painful for me is reducing flying. Air travel produces a lot of carbon dioxide. Another big thing is diet and reducing meat consumption because that industry produces a lot of methane, another greenhouse gas. Other factors to consider are what you drive, and opting to use public transportation, walk, or bike places.”
There are a lot of changes to be made going forward. All of these actions are so important, but so is being informed, aware, and open to learning more––even when it comes from a different perspective.
“I’m a big fan of focusing on what we’re for rather than what we’re against. If you can paint that picture of what a climate neutral world might look like, and make it beautiful, and get people to start striving for that instead of being against what they don’t like, I think it makes it a lot easier for people to give something up when they can see that there’s an even better alternative––or one that’s at least as good––in front of them,” said Stanley.
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