GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Under the Sky We Make, with Prof. Kimberly Nicholas
In this episode we're at the intersection of personal happiness and climate solutions, but starting in a Californian vineyard. We're talking to renowned sustainability scientist Professor Kimberly Nicholas from Lund University about her journey from her roots in a Californian vineyard to advocating for climate action on the global stage. Kimberly brings her unique perspective to our discussion, grounded in her bestselling book, "Under the Sky We Make," where she blends scientific insights with personal stories and calls to action. Learn about the high-impact actions that individuals in wealthy countries can take to trim their carbon footprints and why these choices matter not just for the planet, but for personal well-being too.
We also tackle the thorny (and current) issue of climate misinformation, looking at the role of fossil fuel companies in obstructing meaningful progress. Kimberly shares her thoughts on the empowering realm of personal and collective action, exploring strategies to counter disinformation and promote sustainable solutions.
From civil disobedience to conscious consumption choices, the conversation circles back to one central theme: the collaborative effort required to build a sustainable future. Tune in to hear Kim’s inspiring insights into how working together and learning from each other can help us achieve our common environmental goals.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Professor Kimberly Nicholas, who is a sustainability scientist at Lund University in Sweden and is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Under the Sky we Make how to Be Human in a Warming World.
Speaker 3:A book which I've read recommended Kim by our mutual friend, ian. He said you've got to talk to Kim. Kim was born and raised on her family's vineyard in Sonoma, california, studied the effects of climate change on the California wine industry which is fascinating for her PhD and writes on climate extensively, gives lectures, moderates loads of international meetings, looks at public policy, civil society, arts, culture Wow, polymath really is what it comes down to, kim. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Damna and myself.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Steve, and Damna great to be with you.
Speaker 3:Well, we'll dive straight in. I think so, kim. In your book, you mention at one point the Japanese concept of ikagai, which is what gets you up in the morning, so we always like to start with a bit of the backstory. What gets you out of bed and what tell us about your journey from a Californian vineyard to being a sustainability expert in Sweden?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think my journey has been rooted with the love of people and places as a connecting thread. So I grew up in a very beautiful place, sonoma, california. It's about an hour north of San Francisco, on a vineyard that my parents planted, as you mentioned, and in a beautiful hillside that was great for rambling around and exploring as a kid, and I spent a lot of time in the Sierra Nevada mountains. So I was really drawn to the outdoors and nature.
Speaker 4:In college I had the chance to start doing research and working on understanding the patterns we were seeing in nature, and already at that time, in the 90s, we were seeing changes due to climate change, so vegetation that was moving uphill to try and track its preferred habitat, for example, as the mountains. You know, as the world warmed and plants were seeking cooler climates by going uphill. So that was the first research project I worked on and over time I thought I would study wilderness, but I sort of realized that there is no such thing as wilderness anymore. Humans have really touched every square inch of the world, either directly or indirectly through our emissions of greenhouse gases. So I got more and more focused on not just documenting changes or projecting impacts, because pretty much all of them are bad. That's the answer, but what we can actually do about it and really focus on climate solutions. So that's what gets me out of bed in the the morning, and I've been doing that now for 15 years here at Lund University in Sweden.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing and that's a very good reason to get out of bed every day. I loved it. Kimberly and also Under the Sky we Make is such a refreshing book on the climate crisis as it blends your assessment of the state of the world with science, as you described, the big frame a moment ago, but also a really deep look at the choices we all make in our daily lives. You even look at what all of this means for human happiness. So what led you to make that really wide scope, the framing of your book?
Speaker 4:The beginnings of my book actually came when Seth Wines and I published a study that got a lot of attention in 2017. That was on the high impact actions that individuals in rich countries can take to reduce our own footprints. We focused on that group because that 10% of the world roughly is responsible for about half of total emissions. So we're a group that really needs to look at our own footprints, whereas actually 90% of the world doesn't really need to focus on reducing their own personal footprints in addition to other collective actions as citizens and so on. So that paper got a lot of attention and it was kind of the first time I had talked with some of my best friends about climate change.
Speaker 4:It had previously been this abstract, academic kind of faraway topic and that was right at the turning point, I would say, where something that had been on my mind for decades and something I'd been immersed in became unavoidable for many people. Certainly in California with the kind of catastrophic wildfires that started to happen around that time. It became a really tangible experience, lived experience for people, friends and family and people I went to school with. So it was just this turning point of trying to think and talk about climate change. In a more practical way, when you're talking about what we eat and how we get around, it is something people can relate to and you know it doesn't feel like it's something far away and happening to other people, but it's happening here and now and there are things that we can do about it. That was the the origin of the book and I remember the 2017 paper kim.
Speaker 3:I started using a slide with the different high impact actions and I found it fascinating as well, because we were doing lots of campaigns on population at the time and people got the whole narrative around population and climate completely wrong because they were kind of looking at the global south and saying, stop having babies and you go. Actually, that's not the story here, so I thought it was a great piece of work. That's not the story here, so I thought it was a great piece of work. Going back to the book, there's a really powerful line in there as you outline both the nature crisis and the climate crisis and remind us that it's a great line. No one born after 1985 has ever lived a normal year on Earth, which is extraordinary when you start to think it through. And do you think humans have finally realized that we've shifted the course of our home planet into the anthropocene? Is that? Has the penny finally dropped? Do you think?
Speaker 4:gosh. Yes and no. I mean I think there are real awakening moments for thousands or maybe even millions of people. Each and every day, I mean, I get emails and I hear from people who are sort of newly somehow the light has turned on to the scope and severity of the climate and nature crises. But certainly our politics, our culture, our systems, our economics do not yet reflect this reality. So I think there is I mean we know from research there is a lot of awareness concern. About two thirds of people are already concerned or alarmed about the climate crisis. They're aware of it, they know that it's happening, it's real and it's something they're worried about. But the numbers are much smaller for people who are engaged in actually doing something about it. In the US, for example, it's around 12, 13 percent of people who donate to climate charities, fewer something like 9 percent who volunteer for such groups or activities. So there's a big gap between what people care about and actually putting those values into action.
Speaker 2:Well, that's an interesting point, because the gap between the knowledge and the action we have talked about it with our other guests, but also there is a huge. You said what's reality, and so I'm going to ask it what is reality? Because we don't have the reality anymore at our hands or our disposal. It's kind of after this post-truth era reality, the elusive thing, and we lost trust to each other, to the politics and also to the big boards that have to work truly. So I think that is not only about the gap between the knowledge and the action, and that's also about the era we're in.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to come to, of course, you guessed it, but also in the book you have a section on disinformation and big oil and how major oil companies spend 29% of their lobbying and marketing budgets on promoting themselves as low carbon leaders. I mean insane. I'm going to go on. Meanwhile, we now have Trump in the White House stifling progress on renewables, with a constant stream of disinformation, particularly around wind energy. So what's your 2025 take on this post-truth society and what should we do to counter all of this?
Speaker 4:Yes, it's infuriating and it's really discouraging. I mean these trends have been going on a long time. We've seen erosion of public trust in institutions and individuals and positions of power, and I mean there's lots of causes and consequences of that. One thing that is encouraging is that the public does still have high trust for scientists, and I think that's something I take really seriously and gives scientists like myself a lot of responsibility to speak out, to clearly communicate what we know, to make the science accessible and understandable so that people can act on it.
Speaker 4:There is lots of disinformation and misinformation. We have very clear evidence now of decades of delay and denial by fossil fuel companies. So they have for a very long time stood in the way of science and even when their own internal science very clearly showed and agreed with all of the best science that you know burning fossil fuels is going to warm the earth and cause all these problems, the companies selling those products have known that for a long time and have you know either, hidden that information, caused false doubt about the accuracy of that information and tried to delay basically the kind of policies and actions that are necessary to move away from fossil fuels and have a safe climate future.
Speaker 4:So that is really outrageous and infuriating. We also have the problem of politicians, like you said, who don't care about facts, and as a scientist, that's something really, really infuriating. I guess I take comfort in knowing most people do care about facts and most people are able to use critical thinking and use skills. I can really recommend the work of John Cook, who has studied specifically climate misinformation and disinformation. He has courses and podcasts available for basically how to arm yourself against amplifying and spreading misinformation and how to debunk it.
Speaker 4:It's important, I guess, here to distinguish when we're talking about deliberate bad actors like misleading fossil fuel executives, that's one thing. But if we're talking about deliberate bad actors like misleading fossil fuel executives, that's one thing. But if we're talking about, you know, our cranky uncle at the Thanksgiving table, it's actually a very small percentage of people who are dismissive of climate change, meaning they either don't understand or disagree with the fact that the earth is warming because of people burning fossil fuels and destroying nature. That's just a fact. There's no debate about that fact, um, and there's no debate any longer really, that that fact is very bad, that the impacts of climate change are harmful and need to be stopped. So avoiding, I guess, engaging with the majority of people who are climate concerned is much more productive than trying to change the minds of this about 10 percent of climate dismissives and that can really help us save our energy where it can do the most good.
Speaker 3:And Kim, if I could follow up on that a little bit. I mean, we had a podcast episode where we looked at ocean science diplomacy, where we looked at ocean science diplomacy, and it was a fascinating dialogue around how you need to foster greater international links between scientists like yourself to actually leverage diplomacy in the right direction. I mean, what's your take on science diplomacy as an imperative?
Speaker 4:Yeah, science can play a really important role, and I think the collaborative nature of science the way of publishing and sharing our results openly, of constructively critiquing the work of our peers and making sure that the information that gets out there is robust is a really important tradition in science and something that you know we have to contribute, and I think the ways that we can collaborate can help continue to build bridges in eras like we seem to be in, unfortunately, right now, that where countries are not leading as much and are not, you know, helping build bridges between nations as I would hope that they would. But science can still play a role in doing that so now I'm uh yes, I'm really.
Speaker 3:I to be honest, I hadn't really encountered the world of science diplomacy until we started talking about it on the podcast. Now it's just so fascinating, but I wanted to go back. I mean, you said there a cranky uncle at the dinner table going. There's no such thing, and we've all had those. I remember when I went vegetarian, uh, at 16, and I had a really, really weird uncle he just could not. It fried his, that I didn't want to eat animals anymore. But when we look at personal choice, I mean, one of the lovely things about your book is you close with a very empowering section, actually, which is all about the differences we can make, which we too often lose sight of, and very much coming off the back of that 2017 research piece that you talked about. So could you tell us a little bit more about your formula for the kind of personal difference that we can make?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I really try to focus limited time and energy where it makes the most difference, and that means that not only as a consumer, which was the focus of that 2017 paper, where we identified actions like reducing flying driving and meat consumption as the way to reduce the most emissions here and now, today, which we need to get to zero and to stop climate change.
Speaker 4:We focus there on consumer actions.
Speaker 4:Since then, I've expanded my work and look at these five superpowers for climate action and those are what we can do as citizens, as professionals, as investors, consumers and as role models, and there we've identified a handful four or five actions that really move the needle, and they're the subject, actually, of a choose your own adventure guide that I've developed and I'm working on now, expanding in collaboration with Project Drawdown, expanding in collaboration with Project Drawdown, and so that is available and we can fix it on my sub stack already something that people can go through, and the idea there is to get a little bit of information about you, so it directs you to the most high impact action that you can personally take right now, and these are meant to be a bridge between individual and system change. They're actions that you can take here and now. They will be more fun and more effective if you can bring others along with you and work collectively, but they're things like voting, for example, or focusing your consumer efforts where demand side change will make the biggest difference.
Speaker 2:So, also, I always say that, yes, we have to make that impact, but also we have to force the system to change, and that goes without saying, we have to be on the streets as disruptive as ever. I am Steve and I know that, kim, you are also not only an academic and writer, but you're also an activist and not afraid to take the stand placard in hand and going so. In Europe, in the US, in Canada, it feels like the progressive narrative is under attack. So do we need to step up our activism and be counted, or how?
Speaker 4:Climate activism is really important and I mean I actually went to a talk last night by a climate activist group here in Sweden. They're called Otterselvåttmark Restore Wetlands and I learned more about them and I was really impressed actually, because in my subjective experience I have the feeling that climate activism is on the decline. It's not as there's not as much momentum as it was. I mean, I have been going to climate protests myself since 2014. And I you know, 2014 to, I would say, 2019, I personally experienced and also the data show, a huge increase, not least from Fridays for Future, but also groundwork by a lot of other groups and organizations and people to really expand the reach of the climate movement. And my impression is that that has declined, of course, during, but also since the pandemic and kind of struggled to get more momentum.
Speaker 4:So it's really interesting for me to learn that this group in Sweden has taken 100 actions a year over the recent years, that they've actually succeeded in getting wetland restoration on the agenda, the political agenda here in Sweden.
Speaker 4:It's now one of the government's three climate priorities. So it was a good reminder for me that activism is really important and that it works. And it's a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of ongoing work and I think we have to be creative and assess the opportunities where we are. That group is using more disruptive sort of civil disobedience peaceful but disobedient methods like blocking traffic or other sort of high profile interruptions of property. I haven't engaged in things like that, but peaceful protests and keeping you know, pushing for and demanding change from leaders and having a clear ask and policy agenda that you're relentless about does it does work and we need people out on the streets to get that to happen yeah, we totally do, kim, and it's it's one of those, um, and if you can hear voices in the background, it's because I'm actually at a climate change meeting.
Speaker 3:Well, just sneaking in a quick podcast episode before I have that meeting. It's also interesting, I think, because in a number of the countries with the largest footprints, that sort of freedoms protest is actually under attack, and so I think we also have another flank opening up to us, I think, which is protecting the civil liberties. We need to make sure that our voices are actually heard in that space, aren't they? Um? Just one thing, kim, before I want to ask you about what's next on the horizon for you and what, what you're planning next, but one, just one little step back, which you started this conversation talking about your interest in wilderness, and there wasn't any more. And there's obviously an international agenda about rewilding, and I'm not going to get as off topic and go deep into rewilding, but I just wonder what your reflections are on the nature crisis. That is, the kind of twin threat alongside climate. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:I mean, it's a huge problem and it's intimately linked. A lot of it is driven by overproduction and overconsumption problems. Here in Europe and North America we see very similar patterns and trends, sometimes the same actors in the same companies. I've been working on for a while I've presented in conferences, but I'm trying to get ready to submit that looks at the biodiversity footprint of products, so similar to the carbon footprint, which I think your listeners are familiar with.
Speaker 4:This tries to say what are the consumer products? Because, like the climate crisis, most of the biodiversity crisis is caused by wealthy people's consumption. So it can ultimately be traced to this sort of top 10% group, and that's probably most of your listeners. It's people who earn more than about 35,000 euros a year. So most middle class people in Europe and North America fit into this group. But we're globally quite a small group. It's about 10% of us who cause about half of greenhouse gas emissions and also the majority of biodiversity, damaging nature, damaging consumption. So it's not only about consumption. We need system change, but for those of us who are in this top 10% group, our consumption is actually a really powerful driver. So that's something I'm working on and you know, as sort of a high-level takeaway there. A lot of the same products are responsible for big climate impacts and big biodiversity impacts, primarily animal products. So you mentioned being vegetarian. That's a high impact climate action. It's also a really high impact biodiversity action.
Speaker 2:He was very, very happy at the moment. So I'm going to go off the rail this time, because what you said was very important 10% of the population of the world. 10% of the population of the world. We usually don't think ourselves in that 10%. We always think about the yachts, the mega yachts and the others, but no, actually we are that 10% and we have to be careful about our imprints. That also brings me to the latest report of Oxfam, how the inequality is deepening and deepening. So isn't this a big ball that all matters are connected the inequalities on one side, the climate crisis and also the democratic challenges we will have in the coming years. So this is one big ball we have to play with. What's your take on playing with these integrated issues, kimberly?
Speaker 4:I'm very concerned about the increase in inequality, both in carbon inequality, meaning that increasingly more and more of the problem is caused by this really actually quite small group of people. Flying is a great example. There, half of emissions from flying come from 1% of the population. So it's really globally unusual to fly and those of us who've ever been on a plane are actually in a pretty elite group. So that's one example of inequality. Of course, we have extreme inequality with billionaires, but there's something like 500 billionaires in the world. There are not a lot of them. So, yes, they're individually extremely damaging for the climate, but the top 1% produces 15% of emissions and that top 1% starts at $109,000 per year income. So it's not billionaires that are the majority of those emissions.
Speaker 4:Regarding inequality, I think it's increasingly clear it's a pretty fundamental driver of the threat to democracy, because people feel that political systems aren't working for them and aren't giving everyone a fair shake and making sure everyone has what they need the basic opportunities and services and needs like food and water and shelter and medical care.
Speaker 4:If those aren't available in the political systems, we have, people start to question if democracy is working and we see you know examples, or experience examples of where it's not working, so we really need to ensure fairness.
Speaker 4:We also know from political science research for climate policy to be accepted, it has to be perceived as fair, and to have democratic solutions to the climate crisis, we need citizens on board who will support these solutions. Vote for politicians who enact bold climate policies and are willing to make the changes themselves that those policies will entail. Need to take much stronger stances on talking about the problems of inequality that climate change creates and exacerbates and the unfairness of the distribution of impacts, and find climate solutions which are out there and we know of which are, but need to be enacted which both decrease inequality, so they help things become more equal socially, politically, and also decrease emissions so I think when we do our follow-up kim, because we're gonna have to do a follow-up um, we need to look at democracy and talk about climate justice, because we could go deep into that and it's so critical, but sadly we always keep these short.
Speaker 3:They're designed to be perfect for when you're doing your morning jog. So we're at our final question. Um, which is our network, is ironically called do not smile, because we know we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So question is what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:uh, something that always makes me smile is my sailboat. So my husband and I want to stop flying. We, I've stopped flying within Europe since 2010. But I have family on the other side of the ocean, from Sweden in North America, so I haven't given up those flights yet, but I hope someday to be able to. And in order to do that, we started the sailing journey. So a year and a half ago, as basically total beginners, we bought a used sailboat. We've been learning how to how to navigate it and, uh, we're going to go out there tomorrow. It's january yeah, it'll be the first day of february tomorrow, um, but check on the boat and do a little bit of maintenance, um, taking courses and learning more and spending more time sailing. So we, we have a dream and a goal of ultimately someday sailing across the atlantic, uh, but meantime, it's really really fun to be learning these new skills, spending time outside, and the boat is really a happy place, so that always makes me smile.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's amazing. Well, like you, I've got love miles in my ledger because we're a transatlantic family and so I have to do that. So I may have to go home and tell my wife that we're going to get a boat.
Speaker 4:So I have to do that, so I may have to go home and tell my wife, that we're going to get a boat and we're going to get a boat, excellent, great Well, we have a blog called Sailing From Scratch, if you want to know how to just get started Absolutely nothing.
Speaker 3:We're doing it.
Speaker 2:Okay, danla, do you want to wrap us up? No thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes where we talk to more amazing people like Kim about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, damla Kim, see you soon.
Speaker 1:Bye, good Guys. A podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
