When you talk to Katherine Hayhoe, the first thing you notice is how rarely she talks about data. Yes, she’s one of the world’s leading climate scientists, and yes, she’s been building models and forecasting scenarios for decades. But when she speaks about the climate crisis, she talks less about carbon parts per million and more about people—their choices, their fears, their stories. And that’s precisely her point.
“I am a climate scientist, and I specifically study what will happen in the future depending on the choices we make,” she told me. “And I know, because of that, that the choices we make, our decisions, are the biggest source of uncertainty in the future.”
It’s a deceptively simple framing, but an important one. If human action is the most significant variable, then human action is also the biggest solution. And every fraction of a degree matters. “Every action we do matters, every bit of warming we avoid matters,” she said. “We talk about the one and a half degree target, but it’s not a magic threshold. If we hit 1.4 there’s already people suffering… 1.6 is better than 1.7… every year matters, and every choice matters.”
Denial Evolves—But Its Goal Stays the Same
Hayhoe spends a lot of time online, and that means she spends a lot of time wading through misinformation. “I see misinformation every day, every hour, sometimes even every minute,” she said. “There are many different flavors of denial… but what they all have in common is they are all preventing action.”
The language of denial has shifted over the years. The most obvious version—“it’s not happening”—still persists. But subtler versions have taken hold too: it’s not that bad, it’s too late anyway. These narratives are often more dangerous because they lead to paralysis. Hayhoe hears one version a lot: that a warmer planet might actually be a good thing. “Less snow, nicer winters,” she said with a wry smile. “But the reality is, it’s very bad. And in fact, it’s very bad for Canada and the US. We’re already seeing heat deaths increase. We’re seeing economic impacts skyrocket. We’re seeing billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that used to happen once every four months in the 1980s—they’re happening every two weeks now.”
Knowing Is Not Enough
Data is necessary. But it’s not sufficient. “If you know these things, you’re worried,” she explained. “But that’s not enough.” To transform fear into action, people also need to know three more things: that experts agree, that other people care, and that there is hope.
The problem is that most people feel alone in their concern. “If you ask most people how many people care, they think nobody cares except them,” Hayhoe said. “And if you don’t think anybody else cares, you’re not going to do anything about it.”
Then there’s hope—the most misunderstood ingredient in the climate conversation. “Most people think the answer is no—that what they do won’t make a difference,” she said. “But in reality, if we realize the power of our voices, that’s the only way the world has changed before.”
Hope Is a Habit
Hope, for Hayhoe, isn’t optimism. It’s not the belief that everything will turn out fine. It’s a deliberate practice—a way of moving forward even when the odds are long. “For me, an optimist is someone who expects things to turn out well, and I actually don’t,” she admitted. “But I am relentlessly hopeful, and in fact, I practice hope like a discipline. I go out and I look for hopeful stories… because without hope, if we truly believe we can’t make a difference… we are doomed.”
And the best way to find hope is to act. “Doing something is what engenders hope,” she said. “If we sit there scrolling on our phones, I guarantee it will not.”
When people ask what they can do about climate change, they often expect a list of lifestyle tweaks—go vegan, install solar, buy an EV. Hayhoe offers something more radical: talk about it. “The most important thing an individual can do is not be such an individual,” she said, quoting Bill McKibben. “The biggest impact you can have is by using your voice… Talk about the heart and talk about the hands. What are solutions that are already happening? What is your community doing? Where is your money invested? That is how society changes. It begins with every single one of us with our voice.”
For scientists, this shift from data to dialogue is a difficult but necessary one. “Most people now know it’s real, it’s us, it’s bad, and most people are worried,” she explained. “But out of the 68% who are worried, do you know what percent are activated? Eight.”
Activation occurs when climate change stops being an abstract global problem and becomes a personal one. “Making that head-to-heart connection is absolutely key,” Hayhoe said. “But then you also have to make the heart-to-hands connection. What can you do?”
Hayhoe likes to ask strangers if they feel like the weather’s getting weirder. No one ever says no. That, she argues, is where the conversation should begin—not with models and megatons but with lived experience. “Only a third of the people around the U.S. even talk about climate change once in a while,” she said. “It might feel a little scary, but you don’t have to be a scientist… You just have to start the conversation.”
It’s a small act, but in a world this interconnected, small acts ripple. And if hope is a discipline, then perhaps talking about it—honestly, urgently, persistently—is where we begin.
Watch the Full Conversation Here:
