0:15

Pushkin.

0:21

I never thought of myself really as a deep naturalist.

0:23

I'm not the kind of person who studies bees and bugs

0:26

and lizards. I'm not a studier of nature,

0:28

but I love it.

0:29

This is Adam Eric.

0:30

I think a lot of that had to do with my growing

0:32

up in a rural place and having

0:35

just nature spilling into the garden.

0:37

Adam grew up in Swaziland, in southern Africa.

0:40

There were monkeys jumping in the trees and birds

0:42

and all sorts of things, and it was just so proximal

0:44

to me.

0:45

But Adam left the monkeys behind and moved

0:47

to uc San Diego to start a neuroscience

0:49

lab. As a world expert on the neurobiology

0:52

of movement, he spent a lot of time thinking about

0:54

things like Parkinson's disease, and that meant

0:56

that other big issues took a back seat.

0:59

I didn't know, of course, that we had

1:01

an ecological crisis. I knew, of course,

1:03

about what was called global warming then

1:05

and now we referred to usually as global heating,

1:08

and I think in the nineteen nineties I remember

1:10

being quite worried about it, but I was

1:13

just so busy, kind of building my career and doing things

1:15

I loved and enjoyed and being a parent and

1:17

writing papers and doing experience of my lab

1:19

that I was just so consumed with that that I

1:21

didn't have any space or bandwidth.

1:23

I'm guessing you might relate to this Like Adam.

1:26

You've probably heard of global heating and seeing

1:28

all the extreme weather events that result from it,

1:30

the wildfires, the droughts, the

1:32

storms. It might really worry

1:35

you, but you still feel like you don't have the

1:37

bandwidth in your daily life to do much about

1:39

it. Yeah, you might switch to driving

1:41

a hybrid or change your light bulbs, but

1:43

doing anything more feels like it'll be a major

1:46

pain, a continued overload

1:48

on your already hectic schedule. Sound

1:50

familiar well, As we'll

1:52

see in this episode, Adam decided to throw

1:54

himself fully into the fight against climate

1:57

change, and far from making him miserable,

1:59

this choice set him on an unexpected path

2:01

to purpose, connection and even more

2:04

happiness.

2:04

You're part of something very beautiful, and

2:06

it's extremely gratifying to me

2:09

and makes me feel better.

2:10

Honestly, you're listening to the Happiness

2:12

Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. Tales

2:19

of our gradually warming planet have been a background

2:21

hum for decades. Neuroscientist

2:23

Adam Aaron certainly wasn't relaxed about

2:25

the build up of greenhouse gases, but it

2:27

wasn't at the front of his mind either, and.

2:29

I think frankly, I also didn't realize how serious

2:32

it was until about twenty eighteen.

2:34

Twenty eighteen was the year of a famous report

2:37

by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel

2:39

on Climate Change. It outlined what

2:41

would happen if the world left temperatures to keep

2:43

rising. The report explained that if

2:45

we acted quickly and kept the heat bumped to only

2:48

one and a half degrees celsius, things

2:50

would be very bad, but allowing

2:52

a far more likely jump of two degrees celsius

2:54

would be catastrophic.

2:56

For example, the differen between one point five celsius

2:58

and two celsius is like seventy percent of

3:00

coral reefs being completely destroyed by ninety

3:02

nine percent. So I you know, we want to keep the coral

3:05

reefs and all the marine life that depends

3:07

on that, we need to keep eating. To two cells is what beneath

3:09

to celsius, and.

3:10

Coral reefs won't be the only casualties of unchecked

3:13

warming. Ice caps would disappear

3:15

in sea levels would drastically rise, so

3:18

say goodbye to coastal cities and small island

3:20

nations. The report's list of catastrophes

3:23

went on and on, and I.

3:24

Just thought, oh my god, you

3:26

know this is dramatic stuff. If you haven't

3:28

really sobbed and cried and

3:31

really sat down and had your body racked

3:33

by sort of thinking about how grave

3:35

this isn't the threat our little planet is under

3:37

here, then you haven't really seen it. And

3:40

I think a lot of people haven't really seen it.

3:42

Our planet that IPCC report said

3:44

will be totally devastated unless we

3:46

enact rapid, far reaching and unprecedented

3:49

changes in all aspects of society.

3:52

When it dawned on me how serious this isn't, how

3:54

fast this is moving, and what the threat is, this triggered

3:56

considerable anxiety on myself that

3:58

much of what I hold dea that plants, the animals,

4:01

the whole biosphere is under threat, and that, of course

4:03

is also trigger for me to get much more engaged.

4:05

But what forms should this engagement take? Adam

4:08

was all read doing the sorts of things that many of

4:10

us do, like driving an electric car and

4:13

eating a bit more sustainably. What else

4:15

could he fit around a full time job.

4:17

Now I was a well regarded world expert

4:19

at a sort of twenty year career.

4:21

Doing this, Adam was in a quandary. The

4:23

dire warnings demanded that he act to help

4:25

save the planet, but how could he abandon

4:27

his life's work, his students, and his lab.

4:30

It was then that he came across the activist

4:32

phrase find your own frontline.

4:35

Find your front line is a lovely idea.

4:37

You look around and you say, what are the front

4:39

lines? What are the places of society

4:41

or the institute's I live in? Where actually can make a difference.

4:44

Adam's front line was his university and

4:46

its students. His neuroscience

4:48

class was packed with eighteen to twenty year olds,

4:50

so Adam nervously approached his boss with

4:52

an idea, Can I.

4:54

Teach a class on the psychology of

4:56

climate change? He said? Okay.

4:58

Things started slowly. The first class

5:00

only had a dozen students, but Adam's

5:02

concise global heating message cut through.

5:05

It is absolutely essential that we

5:07

all strive right now to at any

5:09

increase. Every fraction of a degree is very

5:11

significant.

5:12

Pretty soon the class swelled to more than one hundred

5:15

students, and inspired by Adam's

5:17

example, many went off to find their own

5:19

frontlines, joining demonstrations

5:21

to push for local climate action.

5:23

And it's extremely gratifying

5:25

to me. I'm quite exciting to see students

5:27

taking the trolley downtown and getting in front of the

5:29

city council and railing against the city

5:31

councils to do something better for the climate,

5:33

and getting their sense of civic engagement and recovering

5:36

their voices.

5:37

But Adam didn't just wave his students off on their

5:39

protest marches and then return quietly

5:41

to his lab. He wanted to recover his

5:43

voice too. He wanted his climate concerns

5:45

heard by both his bosses and his peers.

5:48

So if you're a university professor, your frontlines

5:50

are the academic Senate, the faculty governance,

5:53

the administration, your ability to influence your colleagues,

5:55

your ability to influence the institutions you're part

5:57

of the Society of for Neuroscience. Thirty

5:59

thousand people jump on planes every year and flight to

6:01

a yearly meeting, which is preposterous, frankly,

6:04

and so part of your frontline is trying to do something

6:06

about that. Make the meeting harps big or make the meeting

6:08

e.

6:08

Each thousands of students showed

6:11

up to join the climate movement.

6:17

Less than a year after his environmental awakening,

6:19

Adam took a lead in one of the biggest climate

6:21

strikes his university had ever seen.

6:24

As part of a global Day of Action, he joined

6:26

hundreds of UCSD students, faculty,

6:28

and staff who left their desks and took

6:31

to the streets to push for change. By

6:33

joining other concerned citizens and demanding

6:35

action on climate change, Adam found

6:37

a vital ingredient for happiness, a

6:39

practice we talk a lot about on this show, Social

6:42

Connection. Adam began to feel

6:44

a deep sense of belonging with his fellow

6:46

activists. He was part of a group and

6:48

couldn't let them down by skipping protests.

6:51

I feel I need to go, I need to be

6:53

there, I need to turn up. I feel that the group

6:55

won't do so well without me.

6:57

I'm the first to admit that global heating is

6:59

really scary. It's terrifying to

7:01

doom. Scroll on social media and see

7:03

starving polar bears and burning forests.

7:05

The anxiety that comes from confronting climate

7:08

change can feel parallel. When Adam

7:10

first read that brutal IPCC report.

7:12

He too admits to being scared, but facing

7:14

the problem directly with like minded friends

7:17

has helped him overcome that fear.

7:18

You get together with five or six or eight people

7:20

and you talk about it, you immediately feel better. You

7:22

have agency together, We're going to do something about

7:25

it. We're hearing each other.

7:26

Adam's activism gave him a ton of satisfaction,

7:29

the same satisfaction he used to get from

7:31

his neuroscience research. Organizing

7:33

against climate change gave him a new community,

7:36

but also a sense of purpose, which is vital

7:38

to our well being. But all this rewarding

7:40

green activism began demanding more and

7:42

more of his time and attention.

7:44

So I think there was a gradual process of getting more

7:46

and more concerned about this, so sort of a gradual

7:49

letting go of one kind of

7:51

career in shifting to something else.

7:53

Adam made the difficult decision to close his

7:55

neuroscience lab, turning his back on

7:57

decades of hard work and dedication. Activism

8:00

became his new full time occupation.

8:02

Even though it's been challenging for me to make this shift

8:05

and to kind of jettison my court Korea, I

8:07

do feel a strong sense of purpose

8:10

and I feel what I'm doing is very meaningful.

8:12

I find Adam's story inspiring, but

8:14

realistically, most of us aren't going

8:16

to emulate him.

8:17

People running around putting food on the table, or

8:20

taking their kids to soccer practice and just barely struggling

8:22

to get them in out of school and feed them, They're

8:24

not going to have time to do this.

8:26

I'm guessing most of you listening right now can't

8:28

realistically quit your jobs to join the climate

8:30

fight. But what can we learn from

8:32

Adam's journey? Are there smaller ways

8:35

we can each find our own front lines and reap

8:37

the joy and purpose that Adam did. The

8:39

Happiness Lab will be right back.

8:50

We are like a little boat going down

8:52

the river right now, humanity okay, and

8:55

we can get to the side of the river. We

8:57

could get to the bank.

8:58

Climate activist Adam Aaron reckons we

9:00

still have time to avert total disaster if

9:02

we collectively agreed to start paddling very

9:05

hard in the right direction rather than

9:07

letting the rapids sweep us away.

9:09

Now. The problem is if we keep dilly dallying,

9:12

then we're going to hit the waterfall and we will

9:14

incur these very large geophysical

9:16

tipping points, we could set in motion things

9:18

that are so enormous that then may become a

9:20

sense. Then in that timeframe, in

9:22

ten years roo we'd be like whoops.

9:24

Adam's new book, The Climate Crisis explains

9:26

the sorts of actions that can save us from that feet,

9:29

things like a switch to wind in solar power

9:31

and the rapid electrification of our homes

9:33

and transportation, and Adam says

9:35

such actions aren't the stuff of science fiction.

9:38

All these positive steps are totally doable.

9:41

It's just that there's not enough people coming out saying

9:43

we want you to do that. And if they did, and they droves,

9:45

we'd get it.

9:46

So why aren't citizens taking to the streets

9:49

to push for this green revolution. Sure,

9:51

there are some people who refuse to accept the science.

9:54

They don't believe bubble heating is happy, they don't believe it's

9:56

human cores. They don't believe the impacts will be grave

9:58

or are grave. And that characterizes

10:00

one set of people.

10:01

But Adam says there's also a second kind

10:03

of climate skeptic, one that he worries

10:06

about even more.

10:07

This is people around me here in californ Any

10:09

probably people around you where you are, who definitely

10:12

believe we have a problem. They may know quite

10:14

a bit about it, they may feel threatened

10:16

by it, they've got young kids, but they're just not

10:18

going to act, and so they are skeptical

10:20

about response.

10:22

Response skeptics know a crisis is looming,

10:24

but assume their individual actions won't matter

10:26

all that much. These skeptics might

10:29

think that only people with money or power can

10:31

make a real difference, and that ordinary

10:33

people are wasting their time and energy trying

10:35

to do something meaningful. Did you

10:37

ever go through periods of response skepticism

10:39

yourself when you started like just that it's

10:41

too big or my actions don't matter.

10:44

Well, I go through that all the time, little micro

10:46

moments, and you know, sometimes

10:49

frankly, I recognize the speed

10:51

and scale of what is needed is so enormous, and the

10:53

timescale is so short that I

10:55

have my doubts, And so I think it is a fluctuation

10:58

between feeling at moments

11:00

hopeful and seeing a way forward, and seeing

11:02

policy wins, and seeing a sense that yes, we

11:04

have the technology we need, Yes we pretty much

11:07

have everything we need, Yes we could do these things principle,

11:09

And sometimes I see evidences happening, and then

11:11

other moments in the day it's like, oh, this is overwhelming.

11:14

It is easy to lose hope. But whenever

11:16

Adam feels his optimism weakening, he looks

11:18

to all the campaigners of the past, abolitionists,

11:22

suffragettes, civil rights activists.

11:24

You have to kind of be acquainted somehow

11:27

with the history of social movements, the history

11:29

of how political and social change is made by groups

11:31

of people advocating locally. But we have lots

11:33

of fantastic examples to look at. I mean,

11:36

you think about the same sex marriage struggle.

11:38

You know, in twenty fifteen, the Supreme

11:40

Court rules boom, it's law of the land.

11:43

Now, that's preceded by decades of

11:45

town by town, city by city, in fact, conversation

11:47

by conversation. If you look at the suffragettes fighting

11:50

for women's rights, I mean, people forget that

11:52

until nineteen seventy five, a

11:54

women in the United States was the property of

11:57

our husband. That wasn't so long ago,

11:59

right, We've made enormous changes, you know. A

12:01

really nice example of how local leads

12:03

to national change is, of course, the Nixon

12:05

era. Nixon was a deeply

12:07

conniving politician, certainly no environmentalist,

12:10

and yet he brought the most far reaching environmental

12:12

legislation probably the world's ever seen so that the United

12:14

States has ever seen in the early nineteen seventies.

12:17

Now, what happened was that town

12:19

by town, city by city, people came out and started

12:21

confronting polluters and pollution and clamoring

12:23

to the point where it became so onerous on the

12:26

corporations that the corporations required the

12:28

federal government to create standards. Now, I mean,

12:30

that's a very nice history to look at.

12:32

And movements that start in your own backyard can

12:34

truly be felt around the world. History

12:37

shows social change doesn't tend to stop

12:39

at national borders, you know.

12:40

In one sense. Obviously, the struggle

12:43

to arrest or prevent really

12:45

bad global heating is a global struggle,

12:47

right, and it needs to happen everywhere, but particularly in the United

12:49

States, because we have our hands on a big level

12:52

here, and if we get policy wins locally,

12:54

we trigger change nationally, and what the United

12:56

States does influences the whole world. A

12:58

sober analysis of much of the great

13:00

legislation, much of the great social change

13:02

made the United States and many other countries, starts

13:05

with a recognition that it often starts locally

13:07

by local actors. And groups of people pushing

13:09

for something.

13:10

The reason individuals can have such a huge impact

13:13

comes down to something psychologists call behavioral

13:15

contagent. Let's say you switched to an

13:17

EV, put solar panels on your roof, and

13:19

go to a climate march. Research

13:22

shows these activities can serve as honest

13:24

signals to the people around you. When

13:26

we see people behave in certain ways, we implicitly

13:28

assume that those behaviors are the accepted community

13:31

norms, and once certain actions

13:33

are seen as the norm, more and more people

13:35

adopt them. Adams is the climate

13:37

fight has seen lots of great examples of

13:39

behavioral contagion.

13:41

Basically, five or six people in Massachusetts

13:43

about fifteen years ago got together and

13:46

brought this policy idea. And the policy idea was

13:48

that when you pay some of your

13:50

electricity bill, let's make sure that

13:52

some proportion of electricity bill go to a not for

13:54

profit that tries to make sure that that money is actually

13:56

used to procure renewables. And that's

13:58

called community choice aggregation. Now there

14:01

are now one hundred and twenty million Americans

14:03

that have community choice aggregation. It jumped all

14:05

around the countries of policy issue. Now that's

14:07

a nice example of contagion.

14:09

Of course, no matter how passionate and persuasive

14:11

you are, you can't win them all. But

14:13

Adam says, the struggle itself can still

14:15

make a difference.

14:17

Sometimes we fight for things, and often we

14:19

lose legislatively and we don't get

14:21

the constructional win, or it may not come for years.

14:23

But in the process of struggling, we have an enormous

14:25

impact on people's consciousness, and that

14:28

is incredibly important and valuable.

14:30

If you started this episode as one of those response

14:33

skeptics, if you accepted that climate

14:35

change was happening but didn't think you could do anything

14:37

about it, I hope you now feel empowered

14:39

by Adam's story and ready to make at

14:41

least some small changes.

14:43

I don't expect everyone needs to do something that

14:45

draumatic, you know. I don't think everyone should drop

14:47

everything they're doing and become climate activists immediately.

14:50

I mean, look, activists

14:52

are always going to be small in number.

14:54

Right now, I'm estimating that we're about one in a thousand

14:57

here in San Diego, and I hope we can get to five

14:59

and one thousand, But we can't expect that

15:02

ever, perhaps to be too big, And I don't expect everyone

15:04

needs to do something that draumatic, and people can

15:06

of course get engaged at night or on

15:08

the weekend a little bit during the day on

15:10

the stuff while keeping their key careers

15:12

going. And I think, by the way, it's important

15:15

to do what you love, you know, I don't think

15:17

everyone should drop everything they're doing and become climate

15:19

activists immediately. I mean, during World

15:21

War Two, when people are fighting the Nazis, we

15:24

wanted people to develop radar and develop

15:26

techniques, but we also wanted the people just keep

15:28

starting sixteenth century Renaissance

15:31

literature, and no matter what happens on planet

15:33

Earth and how bad this gets, we want the best

15:35

of humanity to flourish. And of course that is

15:37

creative, wonderful things that people study

15:40

and do because they're curious about it. So I simply

15:42

don't feel that everyone should drop what they're

15:44

doing.

15:44

Not everyone's going to be an activist, but I've

15:47

got an activist then what Well,

15:49

just as he did back when he was a college professor,

15:51

Adam suggests that you too, look for your

15:53

frontline.

15:54

Just about everybody in their profession

15:56

or in their space has got frontlines on this.

15:58

I mean, if you're a teacher, you can teach.

16:01

If you're an architect, you can absolutely

16:03

be part of a revolution in new building

16:05

design. But if you're in a different situation society,

16:08

you might fork aunt, will work for a nonprofit, or

16:10

you might be a retired person. Almost

16:12

everybody has the capacity to identify

16:15

frontlines professionally or in their personal life

16:17

where they can actually be a communicator on the climate

16:19

crisis.

16:20

Climate scientists have done an excellent job explaining

16:22

the devastating consequences of our collective

16:24

inaction. As I researched this series,

16:26

I was terrified by all the predictions. Things

16:29

right now are very bad for our planet.

16:31

It could get a lot worse if we don't act quickly.

16:34

But Adam says there are hopeful stories

16:36

for what our future could look like if we put in

16:38

the work. He thinks we all need

16:40

to become more positive climate communicators

16:43

and to share these optimistic visions of what society

16:45

could be like if we changed our ways.

16:47

There are ways of our living with much

16:50

less carbon intensity, with much

16:52

more kind of sharing and common purpose

16:54

that actually would be very healthy for people. And I

16:56

think this is a really important topic to explore, and

16:59

World War two is perhaps a good example of that in

17:01

the United States, people, we are prepared

17:04

to tolerate rationing. You know, air

17:06

conditioners and metallic devices were requisition

17:08

for the warf Shoes and clothes

17:10

were made from four or five items on standard

17:12

production line specified by the government. There

17:15

was no pleasure driving of cars. You had

17:17

to have four people in a vehicle with a proper purpose

17:20

and to prevent price gouging. That was rationing

17:22

of all sorts of clerosene and food.

17:25

And people not only tolerated to some extent,

17:27

they thrive. And of course that's an exceptional

17:29

situation. It was an emergency with a common

17:31

sense of purpose. But people rally and we see

17:33

that over and over again.

17:34

It's comforting to think that our grandparents and great

17:37

grandparents faced a similar existential

17:39

threat and made exactly the kind of lifestyle

17:41

changes we need to accept today. Many

17:43

older folks look back on those warriors fondly

17:46

as a time of unity and cooperation. It

17:49

just goes to show that being an engaged citizen

17:51

has a ton of happiness benefits. When

17:53

you fight for a good cause, you'll inevitably

17:55

form bonds with fellow activists. You'll

17:57

get a sense of belonging and a powerful feeling

18:00

of purpose. You'll experience the

18:02

reward of doing good for your fellow humans.

18:05

Just ask Adam. He may have given up

18:07

his comfortable former life and thrown him

18:09

into the scariest threat facing humanity, but

18:12

he's happier.

18:13

Sometimes I have losses and sometimes I have wins,

18:15

and sometimes I'm encouraged and sometimes I'm discouraged.

18:18

But generally speaking, I have a strong

18:20

sense now of purpose and it makes me

18:22

feel better.

18:23

Honestly, so, even if only for

18:25

your own well being, it might be worth making

18:27

twenty twenty four the year to do a little

18:29

more for the planet. You can find your

18:31

own front line. Maybe that's going

18:33

to a climate march, or pushing your local government

18:35

to electrify new buildings, or becoming

18:38

a green trendsetter in your neighborhood, or

18:40

just sharing the special Happiness Lab series

18:42

on climate Hope with the people you know. The

18:45

actions you pick might be big or small, but

18:47

the science shows it's likely there'll be more contagious

18:49

than you think. And above all, Adam

18:52

says you need to drop that response skepticism,

18:55

just commit to getting involved without worrying.

18:57

If little old you can really make a difference.

18:59

I think of Wendell Berry, who says, you

19:01

know, we don't have any right to ask

19:03

whether we're going to succeed or not. The

19:05

only right we have is to ask what's the

19:08

right thing to do on Oh, what's the right thing

19:10

to do to keep living on by the earth. It's

19:12

not a question of big be hopeful. It's a question of being

19:15

the right thing to do and having dignity.

19:17

That's the end of the short season about how we can

19:19

navigate the climate challenge a little happier.

19:22

To be sure, global heating is a difficult

19:24

and depressing topic, but I hope

19:27

you've found some hope and optimism in these episodes.

19:29

And if you've learned nothing else from the guests I've spoken

19:32

to, it's that even in dark times, we need

19:34

to remember the happiness essentials of social

19:36

connection, a sense of purpose, and doing good

19:38

for others. The Happiness Lab

19:40

will be back soon, and we're shifting gears

19:43

in store for February, the month of Saint Valentine's

19:45

Day, We'll be looking at love.

19:47

Oh.

19:48

I think on our second date, John

19:50

said, you know, I was in another relationship,

19:53

but I've told her I'm not going to

19:55

see her anymore. I immediately had a pianic

19:57

tat. It was like really

20:00

already, But five months later

20:02

he proposed

20:03

So make a date and listen again to the Happiness

20:05

Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos