Mechanical engineer and kids-show host Bill Nye the Science Guy [1] spoke to about 1,500 Columbus-area students this Monday. I attended his talk, and found that the peppy, brilliant man who preached the fun of science during my childhood had come bearing a hopeful message of the earth’s future.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has helped to make climate change an enormous hot-button issue, and as the “future owners of the planet”, we college students hear about it a lot. Five separate school organizations have hosted five separate on-campus showings of An Inconvenient Truth in the past three months. The intent to inform and warn has gotten a little out of control.
With the media coverage of climate change in addition to this campus onslaught, most students get it. The close-minded may stick to their guns, but those moveable students understand. Yes, climate change occurs, yes, it will have grave consequences, yes, something desperately needs to change. Now what? The constant reiteration of Gore’s warning leaves all too many jaded and bored with the message.
Bill Nye, in his classically playful-yet-educational way, reframed the issues at the heart of global warming. He dispensed no Gore-like nay saying, he made no threats of the doom to come. Instead, he said this:
“People talk about how we have to ‘Save Planet Earth!’ But the Earth will be fine. The cockroaches will keep living; life on the planet will go on. It’s the humans I worry about.”
So, no forthcoming apocalypse after all. Just a human problem, caused by us humans. Nye also dispensed even more useful information: rather than focusing on the problem of climate change, he outlined one way to help. Nye’s goal aims to reduce energy expenditure in the US 80% by 2050. We can achieve Nye’s “.80 by ‘50” goal in a surprisingly simple way. Nye explains:
“We can reduce energy expenditure by 30% in a weekend, just by replacing every light bulb in the US with a more energy-efficient version. If we replace every car that only gets 12 miles a gallon with a hybrid or a car that gets 46 miles per gallon, which should only take about 15 years, we’ll be up to 50%.”
In recent years, the former children’s show host has become an outspoken proponent of sound energy policy, and even owned one of the now-destroyed EV1 electric cars [2]. Bill faced off with Jerry Falwell earlier this year, discussing matters such as energy efficiency and which came first, the chicken or the egg. I can’t track down a video of the debate, but you can see many of Nye’s recent media appearances on Youtube.
Nye’s message ultimately has a much greater persuasive effect than Gore’s. Contemporary communications theories [3] hold that in order to change your audience’s behavior, you must demonstrate a pressing need for change, but also present a course of action that will work and that the audience can realistically take part in. An Inconvenient Truth highlights just one of those crucial elements, by railing on the presence and consequences of climate change. But of all the time Gore takes to remind us of the problem, he waits until the tail-end of the presentation to share viable solutions. Communications theory says this makes the average audience member numb to the threat, paralyzed by a feeling of powerlessness, and unlikely to do what the persuader wants. To read an in-depth explaination of the prevaling communications theory on fear and persuasion, see here [3].
Nye may have an overly optimistic view, in line with his childlike enthusiasm and trust in the power of scientific invention. But his hopeful cries that “You can, dare I say it? Change the world!” have the power to inspire those desensitized to take action, where scare tactics have previously failed.
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