A Controversial Play — and What It Taught Me About the Psychology of Climate | David Finnigan | TED
TED 
When playwright David Finnigan launched a new play in 2014, controversially titled “Kill Climate Deniers,” he was not prepared for the blowback. But the conversations with climate skeptics of all stripes ultimately taught him a fascinating lesson about how many of us think about — and act upon — the climate crisis. (Recorded at TED2024 on April 17, 2024)
If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas: https://ted.com/membership
Follow TED!
X: https://twitter.com/TEDTalks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ted
Facebook: https://facebook.com/TED
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks
The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit https://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.
Watch more: https://go.ted.com/davidfinnigan
TED’s videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com
#TED #TEDTalks #climate
source
About The Author
Climate change is exactly like Donald Trump! Deniers who think Donald is not a lunatic are just exactly like him!!!🤣🤣🤣
Only two question have to be answered. 1. Why should we believe that the powers be act in the best interests of normal people? 2. What incentivises the powers to be to act in the best interests of normal people or put another way what's in it for them to do so?
OK why don't you start PROVING what you LIE and we all know how climate denial began. Let me guess, you can't because you made it up.
Next, how on earth is it even possible to deny climate or deny trains or cars, explain please.
That is precisely the problem. And also our luck, because if everyone understands the future in depth, I believe a mass depression will follow. Don't look up. The movie describes it well. We activists only like a future that is as fair as possible, because if we carry on like this, it will be as unjust as possible.
Is the climate changing? Yes, it always has. Is it changing for better or worse? We dont know yet. Are humans affecting the climate? Yes. But by how much? No one actually knows. Is there a climate catastrophy? NO, not that we can see. Are humans thriving due to cheap and reliable energi sources ? Yes. Is the world actually getting greener? It does seem so. Is the whole climate debate politically biased? Answers on a post card 😅
It's not denial to live your life. Individuals making small changes on their own will never solve a problem this large. One guy opting for a Prius will not have any impact as long as there are 1000s buying F150s. Changes on the scale we need will need to be pushed Top down through regulations, mainly on corporations. Coca-cola will happily sell millions of plastic water bottles and pretend they will be recycled unless there is a law against it. Putting the responsibility on each individual is exactly what these corporations want.
For example, people did not stop using CFCs in arrosol cans because they had a choice. They stopped using them because they were banned. Then the ozone problem was actually solved.
Learn to swim
Australia should repeal their ban on nuclear energy.
We need more people taking over local politics to start moving their cities towards renewable goals.
Some valid points here, but what makes genuine climate deniers is not the arguments they hear and repeat but identity politics. A particular style of conservatism is their personal brand, and they embrace whatever beliefs and talking points go along with that brand. This doesn’t make them unique; we all tend to keep our beliefs in line with our brands; it just becomes particularly problematic when the brand involves denying basic science.
What will solve the problem is for conservative thought leaders, those who maintain the brand, to shift the terms of their political critique (back) from “is it real?” to “what should we do about it”? (And what makes that so hard is that in the Trump era conservative “leaders” are taking their cues from the base instead of leading.)
This is a good example of why I don't like TED talks much anymore, I don't care about the whole backstory on the play, how it went or how it made you feel. Cut the time of this video in half and just tell me what you learned about the psychology of climate denial.
At 8:10 David says that "at 1 degree warming we are already on a planet unlike anywhere humans have lived in the past". This is not true. The historical climate record shows that in the mid-Pleistocene (1M – 100K years) when humans developed, the temperature hit 4-5 degrees above the 1900 average on three or four occasions. Also in the past 500 million years, during the development of vertebrates, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals, it has been considerable warmer (up to 15 degrees). Climate change is real and will cause immense damage, but it's not a doomsday scenario.
This man has a vision!
Tunnel vision
All of these climate gravy train scientists work for the UN. ALL OF THEM. The UN's CO2 scam needs to be exposed big time but we are in an uphill battle against the controlled propaganda media. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is what makes plants grow. The more CO2, the more is taken up by plants and the more plant growth there is. CO2 is .4% of the supposed greenhouse gasses and humans contribute .04% of THAT. The biggest producer by far is the oceans and this is due to the sun. Warm periods give rise to higher CO2 outputs by the ocean some hundreds of years later. Our age actually has the LOWEST CO2 in the history of the planet. Our vast deserts were once green and fertile lush lands.
Convolve luted, climate is ever changing with or without us being around. We are adaptable and the future never is the same as the past. Likes and dislikes will always be present. It is part of each individuals upbringing and cultural background. What we must learn is to be tolerant of each other and to be a critical thinker. Data and information should never be withheld to push any agenda and leaders should serve their communities even to the cost of themselves or they cannot claim leadership. politics is nothing but a lying game. Free speech should not be suppressed neither ideas. Children should not be harmed or indoctrinated neither people with limited knowledge or capacity for learning.
And science is not and has not ever been a believe, it should be an idea open to testing, evaluation and discussion backed with observable data and repeatable methods of discovery. And even then it is not cast in unbreakable stone.
The denier frogs are in the boiling water of Florida right now… with yet another unprecedentedly massive Hurrican bearing down on them. Problem is… they won't connect the dots, they will continue to reject the reality that they can no longer get Insurance for their homes because the climate has become so dangerous in their state (where it wasn't before). They'll blame it on big business, or the government, or whatever… anything so they don't need to admit they were wrong.
If THOSE people aren't willing to admit their error… there's no hope for the other deniers who aren't getting regularly smacked in the face by climate reality.
There are a few issues that are working against understanding climate change. One problem is that weather is now sensationalized. Look at Hurricane Helene. Yes hurricanes are bad and should be taken seriously and there will be a lot of property damage and people will loose their lives as they always do. However, predicting that this will be the largest storm surge in history! Obviously there is some variation in the height of the storm surge, but the underlying factor is wind speed. So tell me how the lower wind speeds of a cat 2 hurricane are going to cause a bigger storm surge than the higher wind speeds of a cat 5? Oh, climate change! Well climate change isn't magic. There has to be some link if you are going to state it. Yes warmer sea temperatures, which is related to climate change, make bigger storms. But climate change isn't suddenly going to make the storm surge of a cat 2 equal to or greater than the storm surge of a cat 5. Another point is snow. Oh, because of climate change, the next snow storm is going to be a catastrophe of biblical proportions! Paint your doors with blood, sacrifice your first born and pray you make it out alive! Umh, it's three inches of snow. We live in the mountains. We get snow. We will be fine. If this isn't the story of the boy that cried wolf, I don't know what is. And just like in the story of the boy that cried wolf people become skeptical of the alarm. Then there are the stupid things politicians do to make themselves look good. Like banning single use plastics, which is actually creating more waste and is increasing the demand for plastics. If anyone stepped back and actually reviewed the data you would see in an instant that this is true.
We banded single use plastics. So… crisis averted, right?
Interesting ! Well said !
Great words. Wish you were around 40 years ago.
If we unplugged the world, turned off the engines, coal plants. 20 years before we saw stability. Yea, it's too late. Co2 increasing, permafrost melting, methane increasing. Billions are in Peril, earths resources can handle 1.5 Billion, not 8.
Climate change denial is evil. Even if there is a credible issue, the actions of governments should choose working against climate change because, if it is correct, it is an existential threat to humanity.
There is a difference between denying climate change, and knowing that there isn’t enough consensus to do anything about it.
These types of talks are just meaning making coping. We need talks on our options for climate control and fundraisers for action.
Interesting lecture.
Has it really taken this long for climate science to realise that there are 10s of millions of deniers out there who, whilst misled on the science, have a fully valid point: the threat of climate-change now – and the climate chaos which will ensue when it turns out to be true – is being and will be used by the oligarchs to coerce and control the masses in ways never before seen, and never before possible until present-day tech made it a reality. Sadly there really is an elite cabal of powerful sociopaths who firmly believe that totalitarianism is the route to utopia. Utopia for them, slavery for everyone else. And this is why they are quite happy to let fossil fuels companies run rings around governments, whilst giving the impression they are trying their best to tame a powerful beast. ESG yeah right. They want climate change! This is why there's so little progress on reducing emissions. No one is going to help us, the ordinary people. The governments are owned, the elite want us enslaved. If you haven't worked that out yet then this your wake-up call. We have to provide our own alternatives and solutions which work from the ground up. We have to put aside our differences and work together to localise, decentralise, and build new systems of economy and governance which create independent local districts powered by small-scale clean industries. All owned mutually by the people who live there, who will have sense of place, belonging, and purpose. Once enough of these are running stably, it will be far harder to control individuals. Local food, local energy, local currency, local governance. These are the only solutions to both carbon and the controligarchs' agenda.
If he had pushed just a little further, he might have pulled everyone together to face the actual problem: mega corporations that have bought media and politicians They are the ones contributing the most to hastening climate change. Climate deniers don't like the thought of being told what to do or how to think or what to believe, yet they swallow mega corpo propaganda hook line and sinker. Bro isn't going to stop climate change by not taking a single airplane trip, no individual action is going to move the needle, only governments have the power to force corporations to change their behavior. Climate deniers need to understand that mega corps are the ones threatening to change their way of life just because they're afraid of even the most barebones basic regulations that curb emissions,reduce chemicals in food, or heaven forbid they stop dumping toxic waste into our drinking water.
I agree, the earth is changing as it always has done, human's have been here for a speck of time and to think we can stop it is a pipe dream, we either adapt or perish, a good way to start would be stop building places that are vulnerable eg. floodplains, earthquake fault lines, next to volcano's etc and that's already too late my opinion
I’m a climate denier for sure. Definitely no such thing as climate. I can get in my car right now, push one button, and the screen will say “climate off”. How can that be a real thing, much less a crisis?
5minutes in and I wonder if he will get to his talks about climate deniers…
Belief, belief, belief. Just nonsense.
This would make a great TV show with the actors from Mr Inbetween.
He says in the video :”we’re at 1 degree warmer and systems start buckling”. I would say : we’re at +1deg and nothing really happens. -We’re feeding 8 Biljon people, life expectancy is at an alltime high , relative poverty is at an all time low – scientific knowledge is at an all time high – let’s add another degree! The opposite: would we be heading into an ice age would be far worse. Which by the way will happen in the coming millenium.
I think the speaker can learn a lot more from the people he deridingly calls climate deniers than he has already. However he will not learn anything if he keeps calling them that – in effect he’s closing his mind to anything these people have to say that oppose his worldview.
Imagine all these hard working and conscientious scientists were wrong and had an incredible bad case of group-think. But we would still believe them and act accordingly to what is at stake. We would stop the sixth mass extinction, we would have cleaner air and less pollution overall. Our cities would be safer and with less noise emissions, just blissful silence. Furthermore the economy would globally slow down we would have more time and energy to come together and enjoy each other’s presence because we are in contact with our values again and not dumb fools being caught in overconsumption. What would be the downside of this?
Dude had a 10 minute block to speak in and spent 5 minutes advertising his cringy play. What a waste of time.
The real problem is conspiratorial and radicalised thinking. People deny climate change because people are accepting thought patterns that lead people to baseless conspiracies more often.
I think it's less about believing in it and more about what the average person can feasibly do about it. Sure, if we all become more conscious about our consumption then that will have an effect, but until the systems we as a species use are fundamentally reworked, then it doesn't really matter what the average person does. It's a systemic problem, and we all see it on some level.
There is evidence of warming. There is no evidence of any kind of "crisis".