Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Addressing Climate Change Skepticism in Online Communities
Transcript
- 0:00Last episode, I talked about how my community was exposed to
- 0:03its vulnerabilities to lots of rain, which is basically a climate change consequence.
- 0:07We're seeing more humidity, higher temperatures, more
- 0:11cloud cover, crazy rain, squalls, major
- 0:15storms and major flooding. And I talked about how we're vulnerable and
- 0:18how our city and our politicians and our engineers and our planners, we
- 0:22need to start changing the way we're designing our cities to
- 0:26accommodate for that, adapt to that. Now today I want to talk a little bit,
- 0:29and I alluded to it a little bit in the last episode, but I want to talk about some of the responses from
- 0:33my community in terms of Facebook and social media posts,
- 0:37which is always interesting, you know, in terms of what happens. You
- 0:40get a lot of interesting comments from extreme
- 0:45political comments to sort of just great, like,
- 0:49this sucks, I'm in a really bad situation, can somebody help me out kind of comments. So
- 0:52we're going to cover a lot of those, but we're going to cover how I
- 0:55started to respond to some of those and why I started to respond to some of those, even though
- 0:58I knew there was going to be some blowback. So we're going to talk about that on today's
- 1:02episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey,
- 1:10everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
- 1:13your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you
- 1:16can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean
- 1:20by taking action. It's been a hard couple of
- 1:23weeks, I'm not going to lie. I talked a lot about it in the last episode in terms of
- 1:27the flooding that's been going on, watching people in my city and
- 1:30friends go through some tough times with their homes, with
- 1:33their properties, with their apartments, with their cars being
- 1:37flooded out and all this kind of stuff it's it's difficult it costs a
- 1:40lot of money i'm sure it's going to cost the city a lot of money uh in
- 1:44the region in the province and you know it sucks it
- 1:47definitely sucks and when you have people who are going through
- 1:50some things you start to get opinions on social media uh
- 1:54which is always interesting uh and you start to see how
- 1:58people are reacting to the
- 2:02travesty, the trauma that people have gone through. So from people
- 2:06who are directly affected and have to evacuate their homes or
- 2:09had to, they found out their insurance isn't covering the
- 2:12damages from these storms, that's devastating. And
- 2:16that's a lot of money that they have to put into it, probably go into debt
- 2:20or get a loan from the bank. Who knows if they'll be able to get it. There's a
- 2:23lot of stress that goes into that as a family, losing belongings, losing
- 2:27photographs, things like that. It's stressful. It's
- 2:31something that you have problems with
- 2:35years down the road. And when
- 2:38I talk about these types of traumas, it's not as
- 2:41bad as losing lives, mudslides and things like that, that other places
- 2:45around the world go through. You know, this is
- 2:48a nice community where, you know,
- 2:51it costs a lot to live in this community, we pay a lot of taxes, we
- 2:55expect certain things back from the government and protection in
- 2:59designing the city. And we may not always agree with how
- 3:02certain cities or how certain politicians go about, you
- 3:05know, designing or working on the communities, but when it comes down to
- 3:09a thing like this where People can be driven from their homes or,
- 3:12you know, lose possessions that cost a lot of money that they need. That
- 3:17is concerning, you know, for us. And so things need to
- 3:21change. And to get change and to see change, you hear people speaking out,
- 3:24which I fully for, you know, I'm not against the, you
- 3:27know, what that people are allowed to speak out. Sometimes
- 3:31I am concerned about the messages that come
- 3:35out and the problems that that go on with those
- 3:38messaging, with that messaging. And, you know, that's just
- 3:41sort of like, I'm gonna go over today what I do
- 3:45in terms of work with the community, like
- 3:48work with comments on social media. And to do that,
- 3:52you have to be in the right set of mind. You have to be, you
- 3:56know, your mental health has to be good because you know you're gonna go through it. If you
- 3:59start commenting and responding to other people's posts that
- 4:03you may not agree with, you have to be, you know, Understanding
- 4:07that they may not like that you responded and you don't know how
- 4:10where the place that they're coming from or the place They're in and you don't know how aggressive they're
- 4:14gonna come back and you don't know what that's gonna put you through emotionally So
- 4:17there's a there's a there's a thing that you have to stay focused. You have to be ready You
- 4:21have to get a good amount of sleep. You have to be healthy for like mentally to help
- 4:24to do that and stay focused I use magic mine. I
- 4:27use magic mine every day. It's like a little elixir. It has a
- 4:31lot of great like a lot of
- 4:34great things in it. It's got some like different types of mushrooms. It's
- 4:38got, you know, it's got this caffeine sort of,
- 4:41I like to call like balanced type of release.
- 4:46So, you know, when you like, I'm not a coffee drinker, so I'll have a pop that has
- 4:49a lot of caffeine in it. I'm not gonna name the pop, I don't wanna give it a bad name necessarily. but
- 4:53I rely sometimes on that pop to get up,
- 4:56you know, in the headspace, but, and it gives me that kick of caffeine to
- 5:00stay focused and to stay on my tasks and everything like that. And then all
- 5:03of a sudden I'm like, Oh, what do I do now? Like
- 5:07I'm about to crash because that caffeine fix is released all
- 5:10at once. You know, my, my, uh, my
- 5:13synapses are like, okay, we're gonna ignore how tired you are and
- 5:17we're just gonna let you be free and you feel like you've got this boost and
- 5:20then it just goes away like right away and you're just sitting here
- 5:23and you're like man this sucks like
- 5:27this is no no good in any kind
- 5:30of way of of what is is happening
- 5:34with you know What's happening? Like, I
- 5:37don't want to see this. Like, I don't want to have this kind of feeling.
- 5:41I feel like I'm less focused. And so I need to
- 5:44make sure that I have, you know, MagicMind to stay
- 5:47focused. Because what MagicMind does, it actually releases the caffeine nice
- 5:51and slow. So, you're going to feel it over a longer period of time
- 5:54and you're not going to crash after you have it. So,
- 5:57to be honest, I have it usually around midday. I take this little shot and
- 6:01it has got some ginger in it. It's got all these different types of ingredients that really kind
- 6:05of make me feel good about myself. I don't know about you guys, but
- 6:08when I put bad things in my body, like sweets or things like that, which I
- 6:11love. I feel terrible after. I don't know if it's the guilt feeling or
- 6:15if it's just like the actual like content. But when I put
- 6:18this, like when I shoot this down, it's great. Like I shoot it down
- 6:21like a shot. It's wonderful. And I want you to have that same feeling. So
- 6:24if you're commenting on comments where, you know, people are denying climate
- 6:28change and they're going really political and all that kind of stuff, I want you to
- 6:31have this type of elixir to be able to
- 6:34use. And if you want, you can get access to it. I talked to
- 6:37Magic Mind, said, hey, you know, my listeners may need this as well. Can
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- 7:12It's great for you. It'll help you focus and get you ready for
- 7:16these comments that I'm about to talk about today. So I'm
- 7:19a part of a number of different groups. on Facebook. And
- 7:23I know, yeah, Facebook, like Andrew, you're old. Yes, I am old.
- 7:26I'm part of Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on TikTok. I'm with it.
- 7:29I'm with it, guys. I'm hip to the things. I know that sounds
- 7:33awful. It drives my kids crazy when I say that. But I'm
- 7:36in this Facebook group, which is, I love this group. It's called the
- 7:39Facebook Burlington Dads Group. I love this group. I'm also part of the Oakville group.
- 7:43That's a dad's group as well. A lot of people, you know, that when
- 7:46I first joined, it was like, hey, you know, we're all dads here. We're trying to
- 7:50do our best. We might complain sometimes, but we might do our, you know,
- 7:53we're looking at sharing resources for helping our kids, helping
- 7:57each other, mental health things. And it's really great to be a
- 8:00part of a group like that, where everybody's kind of like on the same track mind,
- 8:04you know, dads from all over the city, you know, trying to figure out what to
- 8:07do with their kids or, you know, different like sports, or do you have, you
- 8:10know, experience in rep sports and this and that, it's really great to see.
- 8:14Over the last few, I'd say over the last year, maybe the last couple years, maybe
- 8:18since COVID, we've seen a little bit of a change in the types of posts that
- 8:21we see. And I have a feeling it's due to a lot of frustration, but
- 8:24there used to be no political posts allowed in this group. If you
- 8:27started talking about politics, it would get axed, and it's like a reminder, hey
- 8:31guys, let's keep politics out of this group, let's just share resources,
- 8:34let's just have some fun. There's some fun, hey, where's
- 8:38a good beer place to go? Where's a good restaurant to go? Anybody got ideas? Just local
- 8:41stuff like that. I love it. It was really great. There's some jokes going by, some
- 8:44memes going by, and it was a lot of fun. However, like I said,
- 8:48since COVID, there's been some more political posts and, you know, people who are not
- 8:51particularly happy with different governments, local, provincial,
- 8:55and Canadian, like, federal governments. And that's fine, right? Everybody
- 8:59has, like, if they're starting to let it out, you know, let all the things fly, but you get
- 9:02responses of people who may disagree with you or may not disagree with you,
- 9:06but you get responses. And I've always had this policy
- 9:11for myself that I will only post if I think it's of value to
- 9:14anybody. I'm not necessarily posting if I disagree with
- 9:18something. I'm not necessarily posting to try and change that person's mind.
- 9:21That's not up to me. That's not my job. My job is to kind
- 9:25of just inform. So when I see a post that's really related towards something
- 9:28that I know more about, especially if I disagree with it, Start
- 9:32to want to react to it and and I have to like look at
- 9:35how I react to it I got to take the emotions out,
- 9:39you know, if people are calling each other names and stuff like that Maybe I'm not going to
- 9:43post but if a post continues to come up So as an example this
- 9:47past week, I saw a lot of posts with the flooding I saw
- 9:50a lot of posts with the damages and you started to see
- 9:54posts about climate change denial and and making fun
- 9:58of climate change, like, oh, they're going to call this climate change problems, and they're
- 10:01going to call it this, and they're going to call it that. And Trudeau,
- 10:05as they like to call our prime minister, Trudeau, is going to
- 10:08do something about it. He's going to tax us more, and then the carbon tax
- 10:11comes up. Nobody wants to pay tax, and especially the carbon tax. And everybody's talking
- 10:15about these different things. And then you sit there, and you're like, huh.
- 10:19This seems to be a narrative that keeps coming up. And a
- 10:23lot of people don't want to comment on those
- 10:26posts and on those comments, because they don't want to
- 10:29get into it with the person, knowing that they're probably not going to change their mind. And I get
- 10:32that. Like I said, I don't want to change anybody's mind. But that seems
- 10:36to be the narrative. As more and more people talk about it, more
- 10:40and more people come out the world like, yeah, that sucks. Like, why
- 10:43do we have to pay tax? And it's not showing like, you know, it's the common
- 10:46article, the common sort of comment about, The carbon
- 10:50tax here in Canada is like, well, we're paying our carbon tax. We've been paying it for four years,
- 10:53and we're still seeing wildfires. We're still seeing this damage. Shouldn't it stop? Obviously,
- 10:57that's not how it works. But that is a common comment that
- 11:01politicians have made, business leaders have
- 11:04made, and local people have made. Just
- 11:08sort of like your everyday people who live in a city. And they've made that.
- 11:11And I get it. It's frustrating. Like I said, nobody wants to pay a
- 11:15tax. I don't want to pay a tax, especially a carbon tax. It's
- 11:18good for, it's supposed to help. It's one of the solutions, one
- 11:22of the many solutions that we're putting into place and it's supposed to help. It's really supposed to
- 11:25help disincentivize you from doing things like driving
- 11:30a huge truck when you don't necessarily have to. So you pay more in gas and
- 11:33you pay the carbon tax on that gas. So I went out, this is
- 11:37not to brag, I went out and I got an EV and now I don't have to pay gas but
- 11:40I pay electricity so now I gotta be careful of my electricity. So there's all these different
- 11:44ways of incentivizing and disincentivizing and that, the carbon tax is
- 11:47one. You don't have to agree with me here, although I feel like I'm preaching to
- 11:51the choir here, but there are people out there who don't
- 11:54want to pay this tax, who are far against paying this tax, and they think
- 11:57it's affecting inflation, they think it's affecting our cost of
- 12:00living, and everything like that, even though it's proven not to.
- 12:04But, with that said... That narrative continues to come
- 12:07up and come up and come up, and nobody's responding to it because they know what they're going to have to go
- 12:10through with social media and commenters. People are
- 12:14very quick to defend aggressively their stance.
- 12:18So if I went in, I'm like, hey, you're an idiot. You shouldn't do
- 12:21this. Climate change is real, and you're
- 12:25wrong. That's really aggressive. So I kept seeing
- 12:28that narrative come up where it's like climate change is bad, like being
- 12:32sarcastic. And sometimes the joke, you never know, it's hard to see tone in
- 12:36a Facebook post or a Facebook comment. But I started to
- 12:40feel the need to start to comment. And I'm not commenting to prove anybody wrong.
- 12:43I'm commenting for the person who's listening or
- 12:47watching these posts and reading these posts and starting to
- 12:50say, huh, a lot of people believe in this. maybe there's
- 12:53something in this. If so many people are saying something, maybe there's something
- 12:57to it, right? So for instance, as an example, like just kind
- 13:00of not climate change related, the political race that's going on
- 13:04in the US right now between President Biden and former President Donald
- 13:08Trump as the two major candidates, you know, there's a narrative
- 13:11going around this weekend as I record this that you
- 13:15know, the President Biden might withdraw from the race. He's getting a lot of
- 13:18pressure from Democrats to withdraw from the race. And right before the weekend started,
- 13:21I started to hear rumors that, you know, President Biden
- 13:25is going to drop out of the race and put
- 13:28somebody else in. It's his decision, his decision alone, apparently. And
- 13:32even though he's denied it and he says he's going to stick with the race and
- 13:35he's going to put a great campaign, he's going to beat Donald, former President Donald Trump.
- 13:40there seems to be a lot of talk between different news media about
- 13:44this happening. And as more and more people talk about whether it's going to happen or not,
- 13:48you start to believe that there's something there. And I feel like the same thing with
- 13:52the climate change denial and all this stuff, as more and more people read
- 13:55about the people kind of crapping on the idea, They
- 13:59tend not to believe it, or they tend to say, hey, there might be something in
- 14:02this, as so many people are against it, or so many people have something to
- 14:05say about it. Maybe there's something there, and maybe I should rethink what
- 14:09everybody else has been telling me, no matter who it is. It could be the actual
- 14:12person. Biden could come out and be like, no, I am not dropping out of the race. But
- 14:15then all these media outlets are like, huh, he's saying that, but there's a lot of pressure for
- 14:19him to do it, and he might do it this weekend. People are like, well,
- 14:22maybe it will happen this weekend, or they wouldn't be surprised if it did, or maybe they're expecting it
- 14:25to happen. Whereas, you know, with climate change, it's like, well, enough
- 14:29people say no, or it's not happening, then eventually,
- 14:33you know, politicians are like, look, this is the most of my people. This
- 14:36is most of the people that I represent. So maybe I shouldn't do anything about
- 14:39climate change. Or maybe people reading this, like, maybe there's something in it. That's
- 14:43dangerous. That becomes dangerous, and that's when I start to respond. It's
- 14:46to respond to the people who are reading it, who are kind of on the cusp of the idea,
- 14:50and they start to see their fellow, you know, in this case, you know, Burlington
- 14:53dads, start talking about this denial, and how talking about it's a joke, and
- 14:57how talking about the carbon tax isn't working, even though there might
- 15:00be stats to show different. This is
- 15:03a problem. So I start to comment. And I went a little, kind
- 15:07of a little aggressive. I was like, look, the ignorance in this group about climate change
- 15:10is really scary. And then somebody responded. And I kind of expected, I
- 15:13was kind of baiting someone to respond. And we went into
- 15:16this conversation, which I have to admit, it wasn't as aggressive as I
- 15:20thought. And I kind of know the person
- 15:24from the past. Not well, but I kind of know the person. And I
- 15:27don't know if he remembers me, but we used to work out at the same gym. And so
- 15:32the rhetoric got a little better. He started to talk about how
- 15:35climate change, and he mentioned politics and things like that. I
- 15:38took politics right out. I said, look, you may not agree with the
- 15:42solutions proposed by the government. Totally get that. Totally understand that. But
- 15:45the fact is that these storms had to
- 15:49do with climate change. Hurricane Beryl was a climate
- 15:52change consequence. We started to see increase in
- 15:56ocean temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, continued for
- 16:00quite a long time. A hurricane that's a Category 5 that happened in
- 16:03late June, early July, coming in through the Caribbean, devastating
- 16:08a lot of communities within small island states, coming up
- 16:11through sort of middle America. right
- 16:16into Canada, like right into Ontario. We got those rains and then flooding happened
- 16:19because of those rains. That's a climate change consequence. You cannot deny that
- 16:23that didn't happen. You cannot deny that that hurricane started earlier. because
- 16:28of the consequences of climate change. And these
- 16:32squalls have happened more and more because it's hotter. It's hotter every year.
- 16:35We're breaking records. And we're starting to see the consequences of
- 16:38that rainfall when we break these types of records. And we start to see more
- 16:41humidity in the air. That humidity has to go somewhere. And it comes down
- 16:45in rain. in major storms, and it comes down to rain in
- 16:48short periods of time, and a lot of it. And so I started to say
- 16:52that, and then the guy responded, well,
- 16:55it's like, now we're worried about a plastic straw. Why are we to save a sea turtle, and this
- 16:59and that? Why do we care about saving the sea turtle? So I responded to that. I
- 17:02said, that's a separate issue. But while you're on that, 30% of plastics made by
- 17:05the phosphate industry is 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions. You
- 17:12know, the plastics industry is made from petroleum. It's a petroleum
- 17:16product. And so 30% of that is
- 17:19turned into like greenhouse gas emissions. That's a scary thought. You know,
- 17:22that's a significant portion, you know, of greenhouse gas emissions.
- 17:26And to make these plastics, and then when they break down, they become problems. Like
- 17:30they're problems for humans. They're problems for animals. You
- 17:33know, I said, yes, a plastic straw was taken out of a sea turtle, and
- 17:37it's become the inspiration, like a sea turtle's nose, and has become
- 17:40an inspiration of the single-use plastic movement, of trying to decrease single-use
- 17:44plastic. It's actually inspired governments, including my own, Canada, and
- 17:47our own, to ban single-use plastics because of
- 17:50the major problem. That was an inspiration. It is not the fact that straws are causing
- 17:54the plastic problem. It's a fact that it's a tool that we use as inspiration
- 17:58to say, hey, look, this is, like, we caught this in hand.
- 18:02I said, four months later, there was a plastic fork that was dislodged from
- 18:05a sea turtle in the same area,
- 18:08like 70 kilometers down south of that area, a sea turtle had,
- 18:12you know, all over the sea turtle had a fork in its, like, lodged
- 18:15in its nose. You know, same kind of problem. Actually, it was the same
- 18:19scientist who took it out. you know, these are, they
- 18:22become tools of an inspiration to, for a movement. And, and
- 18:26I've heard this before, where it's like, oh, who cares about a plastic straw? Well, we
- 18:29need to care about the plastic, you know, and how much stuff we use as
- 18:32plastic. There has to be changes that happen. That's a separate issue, although it's
- 18:36kind of similar, because the fossil industry is responsible for making
- 18:39these plastics the way that they're made now, even though they keep, they can be different. So
- 18:44when we look at these types of comments, you
- 18:47have to inform. And that's what I'm doing. I'm informing. Not necessarily to
- 18:51change the mind of the person I'm talking to. I don't need to change that person's
- 18:54mind. What I need to do is inform people who are reading this who may not see another
- 18:57side. And that's sort of the way
- 19:01I do things, the manner in which I roll on social media,
- 19:05to put a little slang into that. I'm showing
- 19:09how uncool I am in this episode, regardless. Look,
- 19:13that's my method, and that seems to
- 19:16work because it didn't turn into aggression. I highly thank
- 19:20the person I was working with or going back and forth with,
- 19:24and it's fine that we disagree on something. However, other
- 19:28people got to see another side and you start to see likes
- 19:32on my comments and I'm not insulting somebody.
- 19:35I'm not coming out and saying hey you're an idiot or I think you're an idiot. I
- 19:38don't. This is somebody who I feel is not correct in
- 19:43what they're saying. and how they're going about it.
- 19:46I'm trying to take politics out of it because I don't care if you're, if
- 19:50you don't like the Prime Minister or if you do like the Prime Minister or their
- 19:53methods, is that climate change is climate change. You may not like the
- 19:56way we manage things, same with COVID. We may not like some of the ways that were,
- 20:00it was managed. There's some things that the provincial government and the federal government
- 20:03that did that I didn't like in that situation, but You have to look at
- 20:06the overall situation that we're in, and this is what the government decided to go to.
- 20:10If you don't like it, vote him out. That's fine. That's not the
- 20:13issue here. The issue is that you are denying what's happening. You're
- 20:18denying that it's a climate change issue, and it's a climate change issue. If we continue
- 20:22to deny it and our politicians read those comments and look at,
- 20:25well, most of the people that are speaking up are against climate change. So
- 20:28why am I going to run on something that says, hey, we're going to do
- 20:31something about climate change when you're highly against it? I'm not going to get voted in. That's
- 20:35a concern. That's a concern that we see happen
- 20:39over and over again when politicians get into, whether it be local, provincial
- 20:42or national governments, they don't do the things that we would hope
- 20:46that they would do to protect us, to make sure that our
- 20:50community is resilient so that we become climate change resilient.
- 20:53Right? That's sort of the issue. So the comments matter. And
- 20:56if you're somebody who is adamant about trying to
- 21:00inform people like I am, you make comments not for
- 21:03the people you're arguing against or debating against, you're making comments for the people who are watching, who
- 21:06want to see another side and are okay, like feel scared.
- 21:10Because sometimes saying what you think and saying what you believe
- 21:14in and saying whether they're fact or not is very difficult on
- 21:17both sides of any issue, because you never know how people are going to react. And
- 21:20if you don't want the aggression, That's scary, especially
- 21:24if it's in person, right? And so being able to speak up and
- 21:28being able to comment on certain things, not to change somebody's mind
- 21:31and not to get personal, but to inform people. is
- 21:34the way I go about it, and maybe you can do that too. But I'd love
- 21:38to hear your method of going at people when
- 21:41you see something you don't agree with. I'd love to hear it, especially when it comes in the
- 21:44context of climate change or ocean conservation and ocean
- 21:48science. Love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Instagram, at
- 21:51howtoprotecttheocean. That's at howtoprotecttheocean. And
- 21:56if you are interested in MagicMind, you
- 21:59can go to magicmind.com forward
- 22:03slash theoceanblue. That's magicmind.com forward slash
- 22:07theoceanblue. And if you want 48% off, 48% off
- 22:10your first subscription or 20% off your one-time purchase, you can
- 22:14put in the code theoceanblue20. That's theoceanblue20 for
- 22:17your first subscription. Taste
- 22:22of magic mine. It won't be your last. I highly recommend it Thank you so much for
- 22:25joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew