Gravity and Beliefs

As part of LinkedIn Speaker Series, Rohan Rajiv from A Learning a Day had a great conversation with Seth Godin. The idea was to discuss the biggest lessons from The Carbon Almanac, a global movement to educate and lead urgent action on the climate crisis, and also a book of facts about climate change.

One of the questions was about what can we do when we find someone who is reluctant to recognize that climate change is even a problem. Seth’s answer surprised me at first:

There are people who don’t believe in gravity. But if you are a pole-vaulting coach you don’t spend any time arguing with them. You help people who want to do good pole-vaulting understand how they can dance with gravity.

There are people that insist it is raining outside today even though I’m looking at the window and it’s not. Because they want to have an argument. We don’t have time. It’s not worth it, because they only want to have an argument. And we can move forward without people who want to be trolled. (…)

There are enough people that can look at the facts, look at the endless amount of data that is available, and decide they don’t want to say to their grandchildren “I did nothing”. Find those people. Organize those people, and soon the culture will change.

The discussion around climate change is not about beliefs. If someone is not willing to dive into the data and look at the facts, then there is little to discuss.