What we learned by talking to 700 strangers about climate change (Guest Opinion by Aaron Strong)

Aaron Strong is associate professor of environmental studies at Hamilton College, in Clinton.

In my undergraduate course on climate change, the first homework assignment for my students is to have conversations about climate change with four different people they do not know or do not know well. What students report from these conversations has completely changed how I understand the challenges we all face with climate change.

Students have approached strangers in grocery stores and coffee shops, jumped on Zoom with friends of friends, and talked to Uber drivers or the person sitting next to them on trains. The conversations have been generally open-ended and not directed by the students.

Reading more than 700 student summaries of these conversations, I learned that most strangers (about 85%) were actively concerned about climate change. This was not a nationally representative sample, as students spoke more frequently with younger people and people living in the Northeast. Yet, only about 4% of strangers actively denied the factual truth of anthropogenic climate change, even though many students sought out conversations with climate change deniers. These findings are broadly in line with expert surveys in the United States. The vast majority of people understand climate change is happening, and almost all of them are concerned about it.

These conversations also reveal that climate change is beginning to feel dangerous. People are starting to realize that climate change will negatively influence their lives and livelihoods; it’s no longer a distant problem that will mostly affect polar bears.

Many strangers told stories about suffering the impacts of hurricanes, wildfires, droughts or hotter summer temperatures. An elderly woman from Vermont described feeling afraid to leave her house after the spring 2023 wildfire smoke exacerbated her asthma. Many of her friends had experienced flooding in their houses. Her overall sentiment was: “I didn’t know my backyard would become so dangerous.”

Such observations come as little surprise, given the prevalence of climate change-triggered disasters: wildfires in Los Angeles, Hurricane Helene, flash floods in Texas, heat waves and smoke-filled air. But what stands out is that most people, despite being concerned about climate change, have no conception of what should and can be done and what is being done about it. People do not have a good grasp of climate solutions.

There is a global, scientific consensus that the solutions to climate change involve transitioning away from fossil fuels by electrifying our transportation and heating systems (think EVs and heat pumps) and generating that electricity from zero-carbon sources like wind, solar, hydropower and nuclear. The vast majority of emissions in the United States come from burning fossil fuels for transportation (gasoline), heating buildings (natural gas and fuel oil) and electricity generation (natural gas and coal). If we transition to electrified transportation and heating systems and generate the electricity needed from zero-carbon sources, we transition to an energy system that can still deliver what people want (hot showers! cold beers!) without ruining livelihoods around the planet.

Yet in the hundreds of conversations my students have had with strangers, most of these solutions rarely come up. Many individuals had no idea about climate solutions and doubted if anything could be done. Still others would raise the great lengths they went to recycle, tried to use less plastic, conserve water or turn off the lights. Many of us conflate all “green” or “pro-environmental” activities with fighting climate change. This understanding of all solutions as interchangeable went hand in hand with a sense of hopelessness in the face of climate change.

Relying on these small-scale efforts at waste reduction will never be enough. The problem is that most of us don’t have a sense of the energy transition that will bend the curve of climate change.

In 2001, scientists predicted that unabated fossil fuel use would lead to over 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions globally in 2024. According to the Global Carbon Budget in 2024, emissions were just over 40 billion tons. Developed economies, including the United States, have moved away from coal power, the most carbon–intensive fossil fuel, and the large-scale deployment of renewable energy is starting to yield climate results.

However, to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts associated with 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial temperatures, we must slash emissions by about half by 2030. That will not happen, yet the ten billion tons of lower emissions has saved lives. So, the good news is that we are on the middle path to destruction. The bad news is that we are on the middle path to destruction. Seven hundred conversations with strangers about climate change reveal that people know this. People know it’s bad, and quite a few think it’s hopeless. It is not.

There are college students motivated to pursue careers to tackle climate change, and people devoted to renewable energy activism, switching to EVs and solar energy. What we don’t talk about enough are the climate solutions we already have in hand, solutions that will reduce pollution and human suffering.

So, don’t talk to one another only about doom and gloom and paper straws. Talk about heat pumps.