Mentors: Climate Change is Hopeless? Here’s Why You Should Still Fight

0:00 What do you do when your role models in science tell you it's too late to fix climate change? Today, I wanna speak directly to the young scientists who listen to this podcast, who refuse to give up even when the people they're supposed to look up to already have. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, I'm gonna be speaking right directly to young scientists who want to do something about climate change, especially within the ocean conservation world.

0:42 Whether you're a scientist, even if you're an ocean conservationist and you're new to this. I want you guys to feel everyone to feel, Hey, I could do something, and I don't want you to let people talk you out of it, but I'm gonna give you some context on why they may be speaking to you and saying, Hey, by the way, this, what you're trying to do may not work. So I don't want you to feel down. I want to give you a little bit of context of why they're feeling that way, from someone who's mid-career and already starting to get jaded like this ocean conservation field. And I want you to just understand that. But first what I want to do is kind of talk you about how I got inspired to do this episode. I received an email from a young scientist, a young lady who kind of just told me what she was being frustrated in, and it was her mentors were telling her, Hey, you know what?

1:27 We appreciate how gung-ho you are to try and do something about climate, but it's really not gonna work. kind of feel both sides to this 'cause I've been that young scientist who felt that way and who got told the same thing. And I feel like all young scientists get told that. But I'm also almost at the age where I'm like, I understand where some of these older scientists that are mentors who are just like, Hey, I wanna look out for you. What you think you're gonna do may not work out. 'cause it's very easy to get jaded. It's very easy to get frustrated. And if you talk to anybody who's been in science for a long time, you're gonna see that they're more skeptical than anything else. Because as what happens is when you first start in ocean conservation, whether you're a scientist, whether you're ocean conservationist or anything like that, you are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right?

2:10 You're ready to go. You're ready to do this. You've been spoken to by scientists, maybe the very same scientists that you now work and look up to at some point in your life when you were in elementary school or middle school or high school, or even university. And you have been spoken to by some of the people there who have been providing environmental education saying, Hey, you're the difference. You're the future. It's up to you. We kind of screwed up the planet. It's up to you. And then you grow into that, and then all of a sudden you do university and you start to talk to professors. You look at what's in front of you and what all the different possibilities and different ways you can go through science or conservation or wherever you decide to go. And you're like, Hey, I can do this. Like, this is really great. I'm getting very excited. And you get into the real world. You're outta science and you might be into graduate work or even just as a research scientist or you know, entry level field.

2:55 You're starting to work with some of your mentors and you're starting to interact with them at conferences and so forth. And you're like, yeah, I can't wait to get into this. I can't wait to do this. I can't wait to do that. And then you realize they're saying, well, hold on a second. Do you think you can actually change something? We've been doing this for 30, 40 years. Do you think you can actually do this? It crushes your heart. It just crushes it, and it makes you angry. It made me angry. That's how I feel. I am not speaking for the person who emailed me, but I'm like, it made me angry to be like. What do you mean? I can't do anything? Like this is why I got in. Everybody kept telling me like, it is up to me to do this and that's why I'm here and I'm gonna be part of the solution. I'm not gonna be part of the problem. And I wanna support scientists and I've done that as much as I can throughout my career, is to try and not dissuade other scientists and conservationists from doing things.

3:42 And I think there's a lot of emotional weight when people get disillusioned by mentors or frustrated at the silence around the responsibility, but also. There's still that determination to fight. And you're not sure if, like, do you not listen to your mentors and do it anyway or is that a good thing or a bad thing for your career? Do you just put your head down and do your science and whatever that might be? That might be, if it does something, amazing, that's great. If not. Like, that's okay. And that's hard because a lot of young scientists are kind of told, like from a political standpoint, which a lot of the problems that we face in terms of trying to change things are political. When we're talking about climate change, there's things that need to happen at a legislative scale, whether it be federal state, or regional or like county or municipal governments, depending on where you live, that needs to happen.

4:28 And unfortunately, the people who are elected to those positions oftentimes are not ready for the commitment to fight climate change, either they're against climate change, but they want to take it from a realistic point of view, and so they're not fully there. And that's been frustrating not only for you, but also for scientists for decades. And I want to give you a bit of context of what these scientists have gone through that are now maybe in a position to be mentors or to be people that you know, you look up to, or that everybody looks up to, including myself. What's happened is, you know, now we're at a point where we're seeing in climate change, we're seeing the consequences that were predicted 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Right.

5:08 And nobody believes scientists, we're seeing it now. We're seeing the wildfires, we're seeing the droughts. We're seeing the increased hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones. We're seeing the increase in storm surge increase in everything. We're seeing bad things happen to good people and innocent people, and it's gutting to see it. And the amount of money spent on cleaning up those disasters is awful. And so what we're fighting now is we're like, we need to fight now more than ever. Every scientist knows that. Every conservationist knows that. But it's the realism about doing it, especially when you have governments of, you know, like you do in the states, even in Canada, where both governments are trying to figure out economically what's happening with their countries. And like for Canada, we're actually impacted by the decisions made in the US And so we have to make decisions that will be more about the economy than it is about the environment.

5:53 Unfortunately, I've talked about this before. Those decisions aren't made together. Those decisions are made against one another. So if we're making changes for the economy, trying to stabilize our economy, because we're a natural resource country, we tend to go against the environment. And so that's obviously a problem. and so we're trying to change that. Now. We're like, why aren't we doing this now? It's the same words that scientists that are now the mentors and people you look up to used 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Right. And their mentors did the same thing, but the problem was is back even 20 years ago, and we still see it today, but it's really hard to do. There was denial. When I grew up in the nineties and early two thousands in my like university career, when I learned about climate change and I learned all the intricacies of science and how it's affecting like the ocean and how it's affecting freshwater and land and everything like that.

6:36 And what is gonna happen in 20 years which was rightly predicted, people were just denying it. Oh, that's not true. These scientists are making it up. I don't know why they're doing it. They just want funding. It's all this BS and blah, blah, blah. We've heard it for 20 years, 30 years. And we know now that it was fossil fuel companies that were sort of feeding that misinformation through campaigns and like intricate campaigns and complex campaigns because they're the same bodies that lobby the government and that pay for people to get into government that support their campaigns to get into government so that they can make sure that their business is gonna do well. And so what you have to realize that all these companies that have been messing around with science, that have messing around with scientists, really, you know, fueling the misinformation, age has jaded the scientists for a long time.

7:21 They've been attacking scientists online, they've been attacking scientists otherwise. Other ways they've been taking over, like funding for quote unquote biodiversity projects and all this stuff. It's been really like BS and they're doing it for greed. So in the email that was sent to me, this audience member, you know, found my podcast through this show that I entitled Climate Change and Capitalism, where I talked about how the greed of capitalism has really been the driver for companies taking over, the government, taking over legislation and so forth in such ways where they get legislation put in place to protect their business. You can look at any government right now that is really propelling. Oil and gas over renewables, and you will see that there's a fossil fuel industry that's doing that.

8:02 Even with plastic pollution. We see fossil fuels industries involved overfishing. We see greed in terms of companies that are just trying to get as many fish as possible and sell them off as quickly as possible. They don't care about the legalities. They're gonna go to the high seas. And it's been a very difficult process. It's not artisanal fishers that are contributing to the overfishing. It is the massive companies that you're very hard to track that, you know, have fishing slaves and all this bias that happens on the high seas and elsewhere where they are getting away literally with murder and they're taking all the fish while they do it as well. So it's all greed that is happening here. And scientists have, you know, their job is to take science. I've talked about this before, where it's like scientists are like the first sort of line of figuring out trends, whether they're positive or negative.

8:46 If they find a negative trend, then they try and take that trend and they go, Hey, you know, to the government or to whoever they publish it in a peer reviewed literature paper that nobody has access to 'cause they're super expensive to get because these companies who have these journal articles just want money. They don't really care about the actual information that gets out there for the most part. And they want tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars from universities that will pay for those subscriptions. But people like you and I, unless they're open access, we don't get access to those. So we don't have access to those. So what happens is these organizations, like the NGOs and so forth. Forth, we'll get access to those or researchers will reach out to them because they have partnerships and they network and they get there and they get that information and all of a sudden that information comes to them and they're like, okay, like we have the information and we can spread it out.

9:28 And that's how it works. We spread it out. And it goes all over the place so that people, individuals, and other organizations, all that kinda stuff, they make reports and stuff and then they go to the policy and they go to the policy people and they say, well, this is what we need to change. This is why. And they lobby the government and they put pressure on the government to be like, Hey, we need to get, change this because we are having trouble. And then what happens is you see those politicians who are backed by companies and corporations and so forth, look at it and be like, wow, this is actually against what we're about as a party or as a government and we need to look at this more carefully, and then they try and hide it and they don't vote on it and so forth. And so some of them do and some of them don't. It all depends. Or some will do the easy way and will go into, protected areas where there's nothing to worry about and for them, and they usually do it in around indigenous lands and so forth, and not around areas that are in the continental US or in Canada and so forth, that is more difficult to protect because there are more stakeholders involved.

10:18 That's a short way of saying from a long story of how sort of conservation works and the frustrating part of conservation. Every generation goes through it. We all go through our young generation where we like, Hey, we're ready to go. We just graduated. We're ready to go. We're bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. We wanna fight against climate change and we wanna reduce climate change and so forth. Then we get to a point mid-career, we're like, oh, we've seen a lot of battles lost. We're getting a little more jaded. We're seeing more of the realistic point of view of how things are going, and they're not changing that quickly. And we're starting to see some of these things happen. Some of these disasters happen more and more and more, and then we get to a point now where it's like, we're seeing it usually every year and there's always something going on. There's always something bad happening from a nature perspective, and it's climate change and everything pulled back to climate change, and we're still seeing governments not to fight against climate change or like go completely opposite and deny it and say it's not really that big of a deal, or go in front of the UN and do all that kind of stuff.

11:10 And so people get more and more frustrated and we just sit there and there are scientists who are sitting there and they're right in a way is. We are in climate change, we are almost past the tipping point where we can't go back. And there are governments who are still in power, whether they wanna make changes or not, who are still not making changes fast enough because we're seeing it more and more. We're seeing the changes more and more where we can't go back. A lot of them are saying, Hey, you know what? We're gonna have to get used to this and we're gonna have to go more into adaptation. And to be honest, that's what a lot of the fossil fuel companies want you to think, that there's nothing you can do about it. So let's just keep doing fossil fuels like we've been doing it before. Obviously that's not right. And there are governments, and every government is usually have mostly investing in renewable energy, but it's taking a long time to put them together.

11:51 Takes a long time for it to come to fruition and come to into production. And so we're trying to figure that out, but we're not moving fast enough. So here is my, I guess advice of what you can do, and obviously this is not exhaustive, but this is what I would say is the best thing to do. So join or create a climate forward scientist collective. Now, there are some places out there already for Ocean. I'm part of a group it's a WhatsApp group that future swells a part of, and we do little things here and there to try and put together petitions and put together, you know, science communication pieces and stuff to get out there. and they do that. Their future swells. The organization that controls it. They tend to put these ideas together and they bring the people together. And we try and all put all that together.

12:32 You can also join things like union of Concern scientists, scientists rebellion, ocean uprise. Those are always, always great as well. There's also, think it's Clean Creatives, I think it's called, which is like a science communication creative place, online. It's a Slack group that I've been a part of, and that's been great as well. So join or start one of your own. Those are always great. Start science communication projects on your own. So figure out what your network needs to know and put those together. You know, write, speak, post podcasts, do a video, whatever it takes to get the message out. Do it. Even if you do it on your own, it'll start to really grow your knowledge on what it works and what doesn't. And then it'll get your voices out because there are people who may listen to this podcast, but may prefer your voice better.

13:16 and there are other people who don't listen to this podcast and may want your message better 'cause they might just connect with you better. So the more we have the diverse voices speaking, the better it is. And it doesn't mean like. People who look like me or sound like me and come from the same background can't speak out too. Everybody needs to speak out and more people need to speak out. And you can also build or contribute to interdisciplinary networks. So mental health, social justice, indigenous knowledge, climate policy. All those solutions need all of that. So that's always great. You can create open source or citizen science projects. So share research outside of paywalls, which is always great, co-create data with communities affected by climate change. That's the big thing. And then of course, seek mentors outside of traditional institutions. Look for activists, look for independent research, look for journalists, look for community leaders.

14:00 I look for people on TikTok and Instagram who are actively speaking out to things that they prefer. These are the things that you know you would need to do. Now, what I want you to do as I end this, is I want you to realize that yes, you are going to hear voices in your life, whether you look up to them or not, who are going to criticize what you want to do. They're gonna say that it doesn't work. They're gonna say that, Hey, this isn't for you. This is not what you need. You don't necessarily have to ignore them, listen to them, but also do what you want to do because it doesn't mean that if they failed or theirs didn't work out, it doesn't mean yours can't work out. We're at a very different time than when they grew up. Even when I grew up, you know where information can be shared and information can be passed around a lot easier.

14:40 It's still a lot of misinformation out there, but if you can put together in your own voice, be authentic to yourself and put it out there, that will help. The other thing I'm gonna say is there's nothing wrong with working a job to protect yourself. Like work your job to pay your bills, to enjoy what you want to do, get your like goals out. It doesn't necessarily have to align with what you want to do from a climate change perspective. You can always do that outside of your job if that's what you're passionate about. Right? Now obviously it's ideal to find a job where you can do both, and I suggest you do that, but a lot of the times, science in itself does not mean political stuff or does not mean something where you may show a bias towards doing climate change. Science in itself has to be unbiased and you have to test a specific hypothesis.

15:23 Now, testing hypothesis can mean anywhere in science from actually look going out into the environment and sampling or looking at how people react to behavior change that will lead more towards climate change. Do you see what I mean here? So these are the different ways that you can go into look at the breadth of ocean conservation and ocean science. Don't just look at how do mammals travel or how do mammals breathe, or physiology and stuff like that. If you're really looking into climate action is how can you take something like a marine mammal and make that into climate action? How do you take a topic that you like and make it into climate action from a science particular point of view? So I think that's where we need to really sit there and understand that this is where you need to move, but definitely move on it.

16:03 Do what you need to do to get your passion out there. Be passionate, be authentic to yourself. Use your own voice, but definitely take action. You may need to adapt. It may not work what you want to do, and so listen to what people have done to see what's worked for them and what may not work for you. You can always try it and repeat it and see if it works for you, but also adapt to what they've done and see how you can get around the hurdles that they faced and stand on their shoulders to be able to build on what they couldn't go further in doing. You know, that's what science all is, right? When we take science and we try and build on the knowledge that one research paper gives, we try and build it on the next, right? And we try and build more information on that topic, and that's how we understand that topic.

16:45 So understanding how we can do climate action, how people can do it, whether it's from a behavioral change standpoint or how do we get policy in there? Or even how people elect, or even from a scientific standpoint in the ocean, how do we get people to understand what's going on is the biggest thing. So do what you need to do. Obviously I'm more communication focused, but do what you think you need to do. Use that wonderful mind of yours. Use that passion of yours and say, I am going to change things. I'm not gonna let anybody talk me out of it, but I'm gonna listen to them because they come with experience and they come with challenges, and they may or may not have been able to overcome all of their challenges, but I'm gonna listen to them. I'm gonna say, okay, I'm gonna stand on your shoulders and I'm gonna build upon them, but I'm not gonna take your negativity to say, I'm not gonna do anything.

17:28 I'm just gonna put my head down and do what I'm supposed to do. We need change. We need rebels. We need people who are gonna say, no, I'm not gonna take the status quo and I'm gonna continue to do that. That's why I'm doing this podcast, to be honest. So that's what it is. And you may not see change right away, and you have to be patient. But I say go for it and I hope this message helps. So, that's it for today's episode. If you have any more questions or comments, you know how to get ahold of me, you can email me again for the person who emailed me. I didn't wanna mention your name 'cause I didn't ask beforehand if I could do this. But once I read the email, I was inspired to record this episode because of that person. So I really appreciate you emailing me. I will email you back. That's it. If you wanna also get ahold of me on Instagram, dm me at how to protect the ocean. But we need to change and we need to do things that will help us change.

18:08 So, learn, adapt, act, learn, adapt, act. Continue to do that. That's it for this episode. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True North Strong and Free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.