Today is the last class of your current four class set. We will start class with a casual conversation. I will introduce a mini grammar lesson. I want you to write the sentences on a separate piece of paper by hand. Please write complete sentences. We will review them in class. Today we will review the present perfect. I have also included some listening material for you to practice at home.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Now that it's 2023, we are one year closer to a handful of important climate goals. 2030 is the deadline for the U.S. to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half, and 2050 is the global deadline to get to zero emissions. But those deadlines can feel so distant. Most of us are focused on today, tomorrow, maybe next year. As part of our series Finding Time, Rebecca Hersher from NPR's Climate Desk has more.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: This human relationship to time - our focus on the present - is one reason that a lot of experts will tell you that climate change is a tricky problem. Anthony Leiserowitz is the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: I consider climate change the policy prompt from hell because you almost couldn't design a worse fit for our underlying psychology or our institutions of decision-making.
HERSHER: 2030 or 2050, it's too far in the future. You and I aren't thinking that far out, and neither are most of our elected leaders.
LEISEROWITZ: The president gets elected every four years. Members of the Senate get elected every six years, and members of the House get elected every two years. So they tend to operate on a much shorter time cycle than this problem - climate change - which is unfolding over decades.
HERSHER: But do not despair. This is a problem, yes. But it does not mean that humans or human societies are somehow incapable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions or protecting people from the effects of a hotter earth. Jennifer Jacquet is an environmental scientist at New York University.
JENNIFER JACQUET: We do all sorts of things that we're hard-wired against.
HERSHER: Scuba diving, sitting at desks, typing on computers, saving for retirement.
JACQUET: We do all sorts of things that we weren't evolved to do. And why is it that we choose to focus on these evolutionary quirks for why we can't solve climate change?
HERSHER: Jacquet and Leiserowitz both say the key is to turn this weakness into a strength - reframe the future problem as a present one, and find solutions that aren't always obvious at first glance. For example, says Leiserowitz, climate-driven disasters are getting more common.
LEISEROWITZ: These are real, and these are affecting Americans all across the country in incredibly powerful and visceral ways.
HERSHER: That is obviously bad, but it also brings climate change into the present. It makes it a right-now problem instead of a next-decade problem. And there are also ways to make the benefits of addressing climate change feel more immediate. Jacquet says some of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are good examples.
JACQUET: If you will buy an electric car, we will give you a kickback. If you install solar panels on your house, we will make that profitable. They're trying to speed up the sort of benefits of cooperation.
HERSHER: Because cooperation is the only way to really address climate change at scale. That means individual people doing things like driving electric cars, sure. But the big payoff will come from people who demand, right now, that the leaders of government and companies cut emissions. Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
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