S2 E11 – Climate Shame

Most top carbon-emitting nations, like the United States, are wealthy democracies. Yet climate change is hurting poor countries first and destabilizing their societies — with rising seas, more frequent hurricanes and harsh droughts, leading to mass migration. Science journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis says buying an electric car won’t help much. What we need, she tells Will and Siva, is far more than good individual choices: a wholesale structural shift, international reparations and a healthy dose of shame.

It may feel good to compost, recycle and buy organic foods, but how and what you consume is largely offset but other people’s harmful consumption and, more important, an entire political economy organized around burning fossil fuels and farming intensively. That’s why Pierre-Louis says wealthy countries need to do their part first, while helping smaller countries adapt to a sustainable future. And to make that possible, they’ll need to reshape their social landscapes and get more citizens involved in the political process. Those bigger choices are the much harder ones to make, Pierre-Louis acknowledges. But we’ll have to make them together — or the climate crisis will make them for us.

So where does shame come in? As social scientists know, shame is an important way in which social norms are constituted and communicated. And when it comes to the environment, Pierre-Louis suggests, perhaps we need more shame, not less, so that we take to heart how our current cultural arrangements harm vulnerable populations, and generations yet to come.

SHOW ART: OUR GUEST TODAY IS A SCIENCE REPORTER WHO HAS SPENT TIME IN THE ARCTIC. HERE SHE IS PICTURED SIPPING FROM GLACIAL WATERS ON THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET IN 2015. AT THE TIME, SHE WAS REPORTING ON THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON MOSQUITO POPULATIONS. Photograph courtesy of Kendra Pierre-Louis

This interview was recorded in March and posted on April 20, 2021.