October 3, 2025 • 18 mins
Mentors: climate change is hopeless—at least, that’s the message many young scientists are hearing from the people they were told to admire. But what if giving up isn’t the only option? In this episode, I respond to a heartfelt email from a marine science student who refuses to stay silent, even when senior scientists tell her that solutions to climate change are naive, misguided, or politically inconvenient.
Mentors: climate change is hopeless may be the mantra of a tired system, but this generation of scientists has grown up under the weight of ecological crisis—and they’re ready to do something about it. I share concrete advice for early-career changemakers who want to be bold, build community, speak truth to power, and help people understand real climate solutions despite institutional apathy. If you’re frustrated, fired up, and looking for a way forward, this one’s for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What do you do when your rolemodels in science tell you it's
too late to fix climate change?
Today, I wanna speak directly tothe young scientists who listen to
this podcast, who refuse to giveup even when the people they're
supposed to look up to already have.
We're gonna talk about thaton today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Let's start the show.
(00:22):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another exciting episodeof the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and thisis the podcast where you find out what's
happening with the ocean, how you canspeak up for the ocean, what you can do to
live for a better ocean by taking action.
On today's episode, I'm gonna bespeaking right directly to young
scientists who want to do somethingabout climate change, especially
within the ocean conservation world.
Whether you're a scientist, evenif you're an ocean conservationist
(00:45):
and you're new to this.
I want you guys to feel everyone tofeel, Hey, I could do something, and I
don't want you to let people talk youout of it, but I'm gonna give you some
context on why they may be speaking toyou and saying, Hey, by the way, this,
what you're trying to do may not work.
So I don't want you to feel down.
I want to give you a little bit ofcontext of why they're feeling that
(01:06):
way, from someone who's mid-careerand already starting to get jaded
like this ocean conservation field.
And I want you to just understand that.
But first what I want to do iskind of talk you about how I
got inspired to do this episode.
I received an email from a youngscientist, a young lady who kind
of just told me what she was beingfrustrated in, and it was her mentors
were telling her, Hey, you know what?
(01:27):
We appreciate how gung-ho you are totry and do something about climate,
but it's really not gonna work.
kind of feel both sides to this 'causeI've been that young scientist who felt
that way and who got told the same thing.
And I feel like all youngscientists get told that.
But I'm also almost at the age where I'mlike, I understand where some of these
older scientists that are mentors who arejust like, Hey, I wanna look out for you.
(01:49):
What you think you'regonna do may not work out.
'cause it's very easy to get jaded.
It's very easy to get frustrated.
And if you talk to anybody who'sbeen in science for a long time,
you're gonna see that they'remore skeptical than anything else.
Because as what happens is when you firststart in ocean conservation, whether
you're a scientist, whether you're oceanconservationist or anything like that, you
are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right?
(02:10):
You're ready to go.
You're ready to do this.
You've been spoken to by scientists,maybe the very same scientists that
you now work and look up to at somepoint in your life when you were in
elementary school or middle schoolor high school, or even university.
And you have been spoken to by someof the people there who have been
providing environmental educationsaying, Hey, you're the difference.
You're the future.
It's up to you.
(02:31):
We kind of screwed up the planet.
It's up to you.
And then you grow into that, and thenall of a sudden you do university
and you start to talk to professors.
You look at what's in front ofyou and what all the different
possibilities and different ways youcan go through science or conservation
or wherever you decide to go.
And you're like, Hey, I can do this.
Like, this is really great.
I'm getting very excited.
And you get into the real world.
You're outta science and you might be intograduate work or even just as a research
(02:52):
scientist or you know, entry level field.
You're starting to work with some of yourmentors and you're starting to interact
with them at conferences and so forth.
And you're like, yeah, Ican't wait to get into this.
I can't wait to do this.
I can't wait to do that.
And then you realize they'resaying, well, hold on a second.
Do you think you canactually change something?
We've been doing this for 30, 40 years.
Do you think you can actually do this?
It crushes your heart.
(03:12):
It just crushes it,and it makes you angry.
It made me angry.
That's how I feel.
I am not speaking for the personwho emailed me, but I'm like,
it made me angry to be like.
What do you mean?
I can't do anything?
Like this is why I got in.
Everybody kept telling me like, it is upto me to do this and that's why I'm here
and I'm gonna be part of the solution.
I'm not gonna be part of the problem.
And I wanna support scientists andI've done that as much as I can
(03:34):
throughout my career, is to try andnot dissuade other scientists and
conservationists from doing things.
And I think there's a lot of emotionalweight when people get disillusioned
by mentors or frustrated at the silencearound the responsibility, but also.
There's still that determination to fight.
(03:54):
And you're not sure if, like, do younot listen to your mentors and do
it anyway or is that a good thingor a bad thing for your career?
Do you just put your head down and doyour science and whatever that might be?
That might be, if it doessomething, amazing, that's great.
If not.
Like, that's okay.
And that's hard because a lot of youngscientists are kind of told, like from
a political standpoint, which a lot ofthe problems that we face in terms of
(04:15):
trying to change things are political.
When we're talking about climatechange, there's things that need to
happen at a legislative scale, whetherit be federal state, or regional or
like county or municipal governments,depending on where you live,
that needs to happen.
And unfortunately, the people who areelected to those positions oftentimes
are not ready for the commitment tofight climate change, either they're
(04:37):
against climate change, but they wantto take it from a realistic point of
view, and so they're not fully there.
And that's been frustrating not only foryou, but also for scientists for decades.
And I want to give you a bit ofcontext of what these scientists have
gone through that are now maybe in aposition to be mentors or to be people
that you know, you look up to, or thateverybody looks up to, including myself.
(04:59):
What's happened is, you know, nowwe're at a point where we're seeing
in climate change, we're seeing theconsequences that were predicted
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Right.
And nobody believes scientists,we're seeing it now.
We're seeing the wildfires,we're seeing the droughts.
We're seeing the increasedhurricanes, typhoons, cyclones.
We're seeing the increase in stormsurge increase in everything.
(05:19):
We're seeing bad things happen togood people and innocent people,
and it's gutting to see it.
And the amount of money spent oncleaning up those disasters is awful.
And so what we're fighting now is we'relike, we need to fight now more than ever.
Every scientist knows that.
Every conservationist knows that.
But it's the realism about doing it,especially when you have governments
of, you know, like you do in the states,even in Canada, where both governments
(05:40):
are trying to figure out economicallywhat's happening with their countries.
And like for Canada, we're actuallyimpacted by the decisions made in the
US And so we have to make decisionsthat will be more about the economy
than it is about the environment.
Unfortunately, I'vetalked about this before.
Those decisions aren't made together.
Those decisions are madeagainst one another.
So if we're making changes for theeconomy, trying to stabilize our economy,
(06:02):
because we're a natural resource country,we tend to go against the environment.
And so that's obviously a problem.
and so we're trying to change that.
Now.
We're like, why aren't we doing this now?
It's the same words that scientists thatare now the mentors and people you look
up to used 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Right.
And their mentors did the same thing,but the problem was is back even
20 years ago, and we still see ittoday, but it's really hard to do.
(06:24):
There was denial.
When I grew up in the nineties and earlytwo thousands in my like university
career, when I learned about climatechange and I learned all the intricacies
of science and how it's affecting like theocean and how it's affecting freshwater
and land and everything like that.
And what is gonna happen in 20years which was rightly predicted,
people were just denying it.
Oh, that's not true.
These scientists are making it up.
I don't know why they're doing it.
(06:44):
They just want funding.
It's all this BS and blah, blah, blah.
We've heard it for 20 years, 30 years.
And we know now that it was fossil fuelcompanies that were sort of feeding that
misinformation through campaigns andlike intricate campaigns and complex
campaigns because they're the same bodiesthat lobby the government and that pay
for people to get into government thatsupport their campaigns to get into
government so that they can make surethat their business is gonna do well.
(07:08):
And so what you have to realize that allthese companies that have been messing
around with science, that have messingaround with scientists, really, you
know, fueling the misinformation, agehas jaded the scientists for a long time.
They've been attackingscientists online, they've been
attacking scientists otherwise.
Other ways they've been takingover, like funding for quote unquote
biodiversity projects and all this stuff.
(07:30):
It's been really like BS andthey're doing it for greed.
So in the email that was sent to me,this audience member, you know, found
my podcast through this show that Ientitled Climate Change and Capitalism,
where I talked about how the greed ofcapitalism has really been the driver for
companies taking over, the government,taking over legislation and so forth
in such ways where they get legislationput in place to protect their business.
(07:52):
You can look at any governmentright now that is really propelling.
Oil and gas over renewables, andyou will see that there's a fossil
fuel industry that's doing that.
Even with plastic pollution.
We see fossil fuels industriesinvolved overfishing.
We see greed in terms of companiesthat are just trying to get as
many fish as possible and sellthem off as quickly as possible.
(08:13):
They don't care about the legalities.
They're gonna go to the high seas.
And it's been a very difficult process.
It's not artisanal fishers that arecontributing to the overfishing.
It is the massive companies that you'revery hard to track that, you know, have
fishing slaves and all this bias thathappens on the high seas and elsewhere
where they are getting away literallywith murder and they're taking all
(08:34):
the fish while they do it as well.
So it's all greed that is happening here.
And scientists have, you know,their job is to take science.
I've talked about this before, whereit's like scientists are like the first
sort of line of figuring out trends,whether they're positive or negative.
If they find a negative trend, thenthey try and take that trend and they
go, Hey, you know, to the governmentor to whoever they publish it in a peer
reviewed literature paper that nobody hasaccess to 'cause they're super expensive
(08:56):
to get because these companies who havethese journal articles just want money.
They don't really care aboutthe actual information that gets
out there for the most part.
And they want tens of thousandsof hundreds of thousands of
dollars from universities thatwill pay for those subscriptions.
But people like you and I, unless they'reopen access, we don't get access to those.
So we don't have access to those.
So what happens is these organizations,like the NGOs and so forth.
(09:16):
Forth, we'll get access to those orresearchers will reach out to them
because they have partnerships and theynetwork and they get there and they get
that information and all of a suddenthat information comes to them and
they're like, okay, like we have theinformation and we can spread it out.
And that's how it works.
We spread it out.
And it goes all over the place sothat people, individuals, and other
organizations, all that kinda stuff,they make reports and stuff and then
(09:36):
they go to the policy and they goto the policy people and they say,
well, this is what we need to change.
This is why.
And they lobby the government andthey put pressure on the government to
be like, Hey, we need to get, changethis because we are having trouble.
And then what happens is you see thosepoliticians who are backed by companies
and corporations and so forth, look at itand be like, wow, this is actually against
what we're about as a party or as agovernment and we need to look at this
more carefully, and then they try and hideit and they don't vote on it and so forth.
(09:59):
And so some of them doand some of them don't.
It all depends.
Or some will do the easy way andwill go into, protected areas where
there's nothing to worry about and forthem, and they usually do it in around
indigenous lands and so forth, and not
around areas that are in the continentalUS or in Canada and so forth, that
is more difficult to protect becausethere are more stakeholders involved.
That's a short way of saying from a longstory of how sort of conservation works
(10:22):
and the frustrating part of conservation.
Every generation goes through it.
We all go through our young generationwhere we like, Hey, we're ready to go.
We just graduated.
We're ready to go.
We're bright-eyed, bushy-tailed.
We wanna fight against climatechange and we wanna reduce
climate change and so forth.
Then we get to a pointmid-career, we're like, oh,
we've seen a lot of battles lost.
We're getting a little more jaded.
We're seeing more of the realisticpoint of view of how things are going,
(10:44):
and they're not changing that quickly.
And we're starting to seesome of these things happen.
Some of these disasters happen moreand more and more, and then we get
to a point now where it's like, we'reseeing it usually every year and
there's always something going on.
There's always something bad happeningfrom a nature perspective, and it's
climate change and everything pulledback to climate change, and we're still
seeing governments not to fight againstclimate change or like go completely
(11:05):
opposite and deny it and say it's notreally that big of a deal, or go in front
of the UN and do all that kind of stuff.
And so people get more and morefrustrated and we just sit there and
there are scientists who are sittingthere and they're right in a way is.
We are in climate change, weare almost past the tipping
point where we can't go back.
And there are governments who arestill in power, whether they wanna
make changes or not, who are stillnot making changes fast enough
(11:25):
because we're seeing it more and more.
We're seeing the changes moreand more where we can't go back.
A lot of them are saying,Hey, you know what?
We're gonna have to get usedto this and we're gonna have
to go more into adaptation.
And to be honest, that's what a lot of thefossil fuel companies want you to think,
that there's nothing you can do about it.
So let's just keep doing fossil fuelslike we've been doing it before.
Obviously that's not right.
And there are governments, and everygovernment is usually have mostly
(11:46):
investing in renewable energy, but it'staking a long time to put them together.
Takes a long time for it to come tofruition and come to into production.
And so we're trying to figure thatout, but we're not moving fast enough.
So here is my, I guess advice ofwhat you can do, and obviously this
is not exhaustive, but this is whatI would say is the best thing to do.
(12:07):
So join or create a climateforward scientist collective.
Now, there are some placesout there already for Ocean.
I'm part of a group it's a WhatsAppgroup that future swells a part of, and
we do little things here and there totry and put together petitions and put
together, you know, science communicationpieces and stuff to get out there.
and they do that.
Their future swells.
The organization that controls it.
(12:27):
They tend to put these ideas togetherand they bring the people together.
And we try and all put all that together.
You can also join things likeunion of Concern scientists,
scientists rebellion, ocean uprise.
Those are always, always great as well.
There's also, think it'sClean Creatives, I think it's
called, which is like a sciencecommunication creative place, online.
It's a Slack group that I've been apart of, and that's been great as well.
(12:48):
So join or start one of your own.
Those are always great.
Start science communicationprojects on your own.
So figure out what your networkneeds to know and put those together.
You know, write, speak, postpodcasts, do a video, whatever
it takes to get the message out.
Do it.
Even if you do it on your own, it'llstart to really grow your knowledge
on what it works and what doesn't.
(13:11):
And then it'll get your voicesout because there are people who
may listen to this podcast, butmay prefer your voice better.
and there are other people who don'tlisten to this podcast and may want
your message better 'cause theymight just connect with you better.
So the more we have the diversevoices speaking, the better it is.
And it doesn't mean like.
People who look like me or soundlike me and come from the same
background can't speak out too.
(13:31):
Everybody needs to speak out andmore people need to speak out.
And you can also build or contributeto interdisciplinary networks.
So mental health, social justice,indigenous knowledge, climate policy.
All those solutions need all of that.
So that's always great.
You can create open sourceor citizen science projects.
So share research outside of paywalls,which is always great, co-create data with
communities affected by climate change.
(13:52):
That's the big thing.
And then of course, seek mentorsoutside of traditional institutions.
Look for activists, look forindependent research, look for
journalists, look for community leaders.
I look for people on TikTok andInstagram who are actively speaking
out to things that they prefer.
These are the things that youknow you would need to do.
Now, what I want you to do as I end this,is I want you to realize that yes, you are
(14:13):
going to hear voices in your life, whetheryou look up to them or not, who are
going to criticize what you want to do.
They're gonna say that it doesn't work.
They're gonna say that,Hey, this isn't for you.
This is not what you need.
You don't necessarily have to ignore them,listen to them, but also do what you want
to do because it doesn't mean that ifthey failed or theirs didn't work out,
it doesn't mean yours can't work out.
We're at a very differenttime than when they grew up.
(14:34):
Even when I grew up, you know whereinformation can be shared and information
can be passed around a lot easier.
It's still a lot of misinformation outthere, but if you can put together in
your own voice, be authentic to yourselfand put it out there, that will help.
The other thing I'm gonna sayis there's nothing wrong with
working a job to protect yourself.
Like work your job to pay yourbills, to enjoy what you want
(14:56):
to do, get your like goals out.
It doesn't necessarily have toalign with what you want to do
from a climate change perspective.
You can always do that outside of your jobif that's what you're passionate about.
Right?
Now obviously it's ideal to find a jobwhere you can do both, and I suggest you
do that, but a lot of the times, sciencein itself does not mean political stuff
or does not mean something where you mayshow a bias towards doing climate change.
(15:18):
Science in itself has to be unbiased andyou have to test a specific hypothesis.
Now, testing hypothesis can meananywhere in science from actually
look going out into the environmentand sampling or looking at how people
react to behavior change that willlead more towards climate change.
Do you see what I mean here?
So these are the different ways thatyou can go into look at the breadth of
ocean conservation and ocean science.
(15:39):
Don't just look at how do mammalstravel or how do mammals breathe,
or physiology and stuff like that.
If you're really looking intoclimate action is how can you take
something like a marine mammaland make that into climate action?
How do you take a topic that you likeand make it into climate action from
a science particular point of view?
So I think that's where we needto really sit there and understand
(15:59):
that this is where you need tomove, but definitely move on it.
Do what you need to do toget your passion out there.
Be passionate, be authentic to yourself.
Use your own voice, butdefinitely take action.
You may need to adapt.
It may not work what you want todo, and so listen to what people
have done to see what's worked forthem and what may not work for you.
(16:21):
You can always try it and repeat itand see if it works for you, but also
adapt to what they've done and see howyou can get around the hurdles that
they faced and stand on their shoulders
to be able to build on what theycouldn't go further in doing.
You know, that's whatscience all is, right?
When we take science and we tryand build on the knowledge that
one research paper gives, we tryand build it on the next, right?
(16:41):
And we try and build moreinformation on that topic, and
that's how we understand that topic.
So understanding how we can do climateaction, how people can do it, whether
it's from a behavioral change standpointor how do we get policy in there?
Or even how people elect, or even froma scientific standpoint in the ocean,
how do we get people to understandwhat's going on is the biggest thing.
So do what you need to do.
Obviously I'm more communication focused,but do what you think you need to do.
(17:05):
Use that wonderful mind of yours.
Use that passion of yours andsay, I am going to change things.
I'm not gonna let anybody talk me out ofit, but I'm gonna listen to them because
they come with experience and they comewith challenges, and they may or may not
have been able to overcome all of theirchallenges, but I'm gonna listen to them.
I'm gonna say, okay, I'm gonnastand on your shoulders and I'm
gonna build upon them, but I'mnot gonna take your negativity to
(17:26):
say, I'm not gonna do anything.
I'm just gonna put my head downand do what I'm supposed to do.
We need change.
We need rebels.
We need people who are gonna say,no, I'm not gonna take the status quo
and I'm gonna continue to do that.
That's why I'm doing thispodcast, to be honest.
So that's what it is.
And you may not see change rightaway, and you have to be patient.
But I say go for it and Ihope this message helps.
So, that's it for today's episode.
If you have any more questionsor comments, you know how to get
(17:47):
ahold of me, you can email me againfor the person who emailed me.
I didn't wanna mention your name 'cause Ididn't ask beforehand if I could do this.
But once I read the email, Iwas inspired to record this
episode because of that person.
So I really appreciate you emailing me.
I will email you back.
That's it.
If you wanna also get aholdof me on Instagram, dm me
at how to protect the ocean.
But we need to change and we need todo things that will help us change.
(18:08):
So, learn, adapt, act, learn, adapt, act.
Continue to do that.
That's it for this episode.
I wanna thank you so much forjoining me on today's episode of the
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin fromthe True North Strong and Free.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next timeand happy conservation.
What do you do when your rolemodels in science tell you it's
too late to fix climate change?
Today, I wanna speak directly tothe young scientists who listen to
this podcast, who refuse to giveup even when the people they're
supposed to look up to already have.
We're gonna talk about thaton today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Let's start the show.
(00:22):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another exciting episodeof the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and thisis the podcast where you find out what's
happening with the ocean, how you canspeak up for the ocean, what you can do to
live for a better ocean by taking action.
On today's episode, I'm gonna bespeaking right directly to young
scientists who want to do somethingabout climate change, especially
within the ocean conservation world.
Whether you're a scientist, evenif you're an ocean conservationist
(00:45):
and you're new to this.
I want you guys to feel everyone tofeel, Hey, I could do something, and I
don't want you to let people talk youout of it, but I'm gonna give you some
context on why they may be speaking toyou and saying, Hey, by the way, this,
what you're trying to do may not work.
So I don't want you to feel down.
I want to give you a little bit ofcontext of why they're feeling that
(01:06):
way, from someone who's mid-careerand already starting to get jaded
like this ocean conservation field.
And I want you to just understand that.
But first what I want to do iskind of talk you about how I
got inspired to do this episode.
I received an email from a youngscientist, a young lady who kind
of just told me what she was beingfrustrated in, and it was her mentors
were telling her, Hey, you know what?
(01:27):
We appreciate how gung-ho you are totry and do something about climate,
but it's really not gonna work.
kind of feel both sides to this 'causeI've been that young scientist who felt
that way and who got told the same thing.
And I feel like all youngscientists get told that.
But I'm also almost at the age where I'mlike, I understand where some of these
older scientists that are mentors who arejust like, Hey, I wanna look out for you.
(01:49):
What you think you'regonna do may not work out.
'cause it's very easy to get jaded.
It's very easy to get frustrated.
And if you talk to anybody who'sbeen in science for a long time,
you're gonna see that they'remore skeptical than anything else.
Because as what happens is when you firststart in ocean conservation, whether
you're a scientist, whether you're oceanconservationist or anything like that, you
are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right?
(02:10):
You're ready to go.
You're ready to do this.
You've been spoken to by scientists,maybe the very same scientists that
you now work and look up to at somepoint in your life when you were in
elementary school or middle schoolor high school, or even university.
And you have been spoken to by someof the people there who have been
providing environmental educationsaying, Hey, you're the difference.
You're the future.
It's up to you.
(02:31):
We kind of screwed up the planet.
It's up to you.
And then you grow into that, and thenall of a sudden you do university
and you start to talk to professors.
You look at what's in front ofyou and what all the different
possibilities and different ways youcan go through science or conservation
or wherever you decide to go.
And you're like, Hey, I can do this.
Like, this is really great.
I'm getting very excited.
And you get into the real world.
You're outta science and you might be intograduate work or even just as a research
(02:52):
scientist or you know, entry level field.
You're starting to work with some of yourmentors and you're starting to interact
with them at conferences and so forth.
And you're like, yeah, Ican't wait to get into this.
I can't wait to do this.
I can't wait to do that.
And then you realize they'resaying, well, hold on a second.
Do you think you canactually change something?
We've been doing this for 30, 40 years.
Do you think you can actually do this?
It crushes your heart.
(03:12):
It just crushes it,and it makes you angry.
It made me angry.
That's how I feel.
I am not speaking for the personwho emailed me, but I'm like,
it made me angry to be like.
What do you mean?
I can't do anything?
Like this is why I got in.
Everybody kept telling me like, it is upto me to do this and that's why I'm here
and I'm gonna be part of the solution.
I'm not gonna be part of the problem.
And I wanna support scientists andI've done that as much as I can
(03:34):
throughout my career, is to try andnot dissuade other scientists and
conservationists from doing things.
And I think there's a lot of emotionalweight when people get disillusioned
by mentors or frustrated at the silencearound the responsibility, but also.
There's still that determination to fight.
(03:54):
And you're not sure if, like, do younot listen to your mentors and do
it anyway or is that a good thingor a bad thing for your career?
Do you just put your head down and doyour science and whatever that might be?
That might be, if it doessomething, amazing, that's great.
If not.
Like, that's okay.
And that's hard because a lot of youngscientists are kind of told, like from
a political standpoint, which a lot ofthe problems that we face in terms of
(04:15):
trying to change things are political.
When we're talking about climatechange, there's things that need to
happen at a legislative scale, whetherit be federal state, or regional or
like county or municipal governments,depending on where you live,
that needs to happen.
And unfortunately, the people who areelected to those positions oftentimes
are not ready for the commitment tofight climate change, either they're
(04:37):
against climate change, but they wantto take it from a realistic point of
view, and so they're not fully there.
And that's been frustrating not only foryou, but also for scientists for decades.
And I want to give you a bit ofcontext of what these scientists have
gone through that are now maybe in aposition to be mentors or to be people
that you know, you look up to, or thateverybody looks up to, including myself.
(04:59):
What's happened is, you know, nowwe're at a point where we're seeing
in climate change, we're seeing theconsequences that were predicted
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Right.
And nobody believes scientists,we're seeing it now.
We're seeing the wildfires,we're seeing the droughts.
We're seeing the increasedhurricanes, typhoons, cyclones.
We're seeing the increase in stormsurge increase in everything.
(05:19):
We're seeing bad things happen togood people and innocent people,
and it's gutting to see it.
And the amount of money spent oncleaning up those disasters is awful.
And so what we're fighting now is we'relike, we need to fight now more than ever.
Every scientist knows that.
Every conservationist knows that.
But it's the realism about doing it,especially when you have governments
of, you know, like you do in the states,even in Canada, where both governments
(05:40):
are trying to figure out economicallywhat's happening with their countries.
And like for Canada, we're actuallyimpacted by the decisions made in the
US And so we have to make decisionsthat will be more about the economy
than it is about the environment.
Unfortunately, I'vetalked about this before.
Those decisions aren't made together.
Those decisions are madeagainst one another.
So if we're making changes for theeconomy, trying to stabilize our economy,
(06:02):
because we're a natural resource country,we tend to go against the environment.
And so that's obviously a problem.
and so we're trying to change that.
Now.
We're like, why aren't we doing this now?
It's the same words that scientists thatare now the mentors and people you look
up to used 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Right.
And their mentors did the same thing,but the problem was is back even
20 years ago, and we still see ittoday, but it's really hard to do.
(06:24):
There was denial.
When I grew up in the nineties and earlytwo thousands in my like university
career, when I learned about climatechange and I learned all the intricacies
of science and how it's affecting like theocean and how it's affecting freshwater
and land and everything like that.
And what is gonna happen in 20years which was rightly predicted,
people were just denying it.
Oh, that's not true.
These scientists are making it up.
I don't know why they're doing it.
(06:44):
They just want funding.
It's all this BS and blah, blah, blah.
We've heard it for 20 years, 30 years.
And we know now that it was fossil fuelcompanies that were sort of feeding that
misinformation through campaigns andlike intricate campaigns and complex
campaigns because they're the same bodiesthat lobby the government and that pay
for people to get into government thatsupport their campaigns to get into
government so that they can make surethat their business is gonna do well.
(07:08):
And so what you have to realize that allthese companies that have been messing
around with science, that have messingaround with scientists, really, you
know, fueling the misinformation, agehas jaded the scientists for a long time.
They've been attackingscientists online, they've been
attacking scientists otherwise.
Other ways they've been takingover, like funding for quote unquote
biodiversity projects and all this stuff.
(07:30):
It's been really like BS andthey're doing it for greed.
So in the email that was sent to me,this audience member, you know, found
my podcast through this show that Ientitled Climate Change and Capitalism,
where I talked about how the greed ofcapitalism has really been the driver for
companies taking over, the government,taking over legislation and so forth
in such ways where they get legislationput in place to protect their business.
(07:52):
You can look at any governmentright now that is really propelling.
Oil and gas over renewables, andyou will see that there's a fossil
fuel industry that's doing that.
Even with plastic pollution.
We see fossil fuels industriesinvolved overfishing.
We see greed in terms of companiesthat are just trying to get as
many fish as possible and sellthem off as quickly as possible.
(08:13):
They don't care about the legalities.
They're gonna go to the high seas.
And it's been a very difficult process.
It's not artisanal fishers that arecontributing to the overfishing.
It is the massive companies that you'revery hard to track that, you know, have
fishing slaves and all this bias thathappens on the high seas and elsewhere
where they are getting away literallywith murder and they're taking all
(08:34):
the fish while they do it as well.
So it's all greed that is happening here.
And scientists have, you know,their job is to take science.
I've talked about this before, whereit's like scientists are like the first
sort of line of figuring out trends,whether they're positive or negative.
If they find a negative trend, thenthey try and take that trend and they
go, Hey, you know, to the governmentor to whoever they publish it in a peer
reviewed literature paper that nobody hasaccess to 'cause they're super expensive
(08:56):
to get because these companies who havethese journal articles just want money.
They don't really care aboutthe actual information that gets
out there for the most part.
And they want tens of thousandsof hundreds of thousands of
dollars from universities thatwill pay for those subscriptions.
But people like you and I, unless they'reopen access, we don't get access to those.
So we don't have access to those.
So what happens is these organizations,like the NGOs and so forth.
(09:16):
Forth, we'll get access to those orresearchers will reach out to them
because they have partnerships and theynetwork and they get there and they get
that information and all of a suddenthat information comes to them and
they're like, okay, like we have theinformation and we can spread it out.
And that's how it works.
We spread it out.
And it goes all over the place sothat people, individuals, and other
organizations, all that kinda stuff,they make reports and stuff and then
(09:36):
they go to the policy and they goto the policy people and they say,
well, this is what we need to change.
This is why.
And they lobby the government andthey put pressure on the government to
be like, Hey, we need to get, changethis because we are having trouble.
And then what happens is you see thosepoliticians who are backed by companies
and corporations and so forth, look at itand be like, wow, this is actually against
what we're about as a party or as agovernment and we need to look at this
more carefully, and then they try and hideit and they don't vote on it and so forth.
(09:59):
And so some of them doand some of them don't.
It all depends.
Or some will do the easy way andwill go into, protected areas where
there's nothing to worry about and forthem, and they usually do it in around
indigenous lands and so forth, and not
around areas that are in the continentalUS or in Canada and so forth, that
is more difficult to protect becausethere are more stakeholders involved.
That's a short way of saying from a longstory of how sort of conservation works
(10:22):
and the frustrating part of conservation.
Every generation goes through it.
We all go through our young generationwhere we like, Hey, we're ready to go.
We just graduated.
We're ready to go.
We're bright-eyed, bushy-tailed.
We wanna fight against climatechange and we wanna reduce
climate change and so forth.
Then we get to a pointmid-career, we're like, oh,
we've seen a lot of battles lost.
We're getting a little more jaded.
We're seeing more of the realisticpoint of view of how things are going,
(10:44):
and they're not changing that quickly.
And we're starting to seesome of these things happen.
Some of these disasters happen moreand more and more, and then we get
to a point now where it's like, we'reseeing it usually every year and
there's always something going on.
There's always something bad happeningfrom a nature perspective, and it's
climate change and everything pulledback to climate change, and we're still
seeing governments not to fight againstclimate change or like go completely
(11:05):
opposite and deny it and say it's notreally that big of a deal, or go in front
of the UN and do all that kind of stuff.
And so people get more and morefrustrated and we just sit there and
there are scientists who are sittingthere and they're right in a way is.
We are in climate change, weare almost past the tipping
point where we can't go back.
And there are governments who arestill in power, whether they wanna
make changes or not, who are stillnot making changes fast enough
(11:25):
because we're seeing it more and more.
We're seeing the changes moreand more where we can't go back.
A lot of them are saying,Hey, you know what?
We're gonna have to get usedto this and we're gonna have
to go more into adaptation.
And to be honest, that's what a lot of thefossil fuel companies want you to think,
that there's nothing you can do about it.
So let's just keep doing fossil fuelslike we've been doing it before.
Obviously that's not right.
And there are governments, and everygovernment is usually have mostly
(11:46):
investing in renewable energy, but it'staking a long time to put them together.
Takes a long time for it to come tofruition and come to into production.
And so we're trying to figure thatout, but we're not moving fast enough.
So here is my, I guess advice ofwhat you can do, and obviously this
is not exhaustive, but this is whatI would say is the best thing to do.
(12:07):
So join or create a climateforward scientist collective.
Now, there are some placesout there already for Ocean.
I'm part of a group it's a WhatsAppgroup that future swells a part of, and
we do little things here and there totry and put together petitions and put
together, you know, science communicationpieces and stuff to get out there.
and they do that.
Their future swells.
The organization that controls it.
(12:27):
They tend to put these ideas togetherand they bring the people together.
And we try and all put all that together.
You can also join things likeunion of Concern scientists,
scientists rebellion, ocean uprise.
Those are always, always great as well.
There's also, think it'sClean Creatives, I think it's
called, which is like a sciencecommunication creative place, online.
It's a Slack group that I've been apart of, and that's been great as well.
(12:48):
So join or start one of your own.
Those are always great.
Start science communicationprojects on your own.
So figure out what your networkneeds to know and put those together.
You know, write, speak, postpodcasts, do a video, whatever
it takes to get the message out.
Do it.
Even if you do it on your own, it'llstart to really grow your knowledge
on what it works and what doesn't.
(13:11):
And then it'll get your voicesout because there are people who
may listen to this podcast, butmay prefer your voice better.
and there are other people who don'tlisten to this podcast and may want
your message better 'cause theymight just connect with you better.
So the more we have the diversevoices speaking, the better it is.
And it doesn't mean like.
People who look like me or soundlike me and come from the same
background can't speak out too.
(13:31):
Everybody needs to speak out andmore people need to speak out.
And you can also build or contributeto interdisciplinary networks.
So mental health, social justice,indigenous knowledge, climate policy.
All those solutions need all of that.
So that's always great.
You can create open sourceor citizen science projects.
So share research outside of paywalls,which is always great, co-create data with
communities affected by climate change.
(13:52):
That's the big thing.
And then of course, seek mentorsoutside of traditional institutions.
Look for activists, look forindependent research, look for
journalists, look for community leaders.
I look for people on TikTok andInstagram who are actively speaking
out to things that they prefer.
These are the things that youknow you would need to do.
Now, what I want you to do as I end this,is I want you to realize that yes, you are
(14:13):
going to hear voices in your life, whetheryou look up to them or not, who are
going to criticize what you want to do.
They're gonna say that it doesn't work.
They're gonna say that,Hey, this isn't for you.
This is not what you need.
You don't necessarily have to ignore them,listen to them, but also do what you want
to do because it doesn't mean that ifthey failed or theirs didn't work out,
it doesn't mean yours can't work out.
We're at a very differenttime than when they grew up.
(14:34):
Even when I grew up, you know whereinformation can be shared and information
can be passed around a lot easier.
It's still a lot of misinformation outthere, but if you can put together in
your own voice, be authentic to yourselfand put it out there, that will help.
The other thing I'm gonna sayis there's nothing wrong with
working a job to protect yourself.
Like work your job to pay yourbills, to enjoy what you want
(14:56):
to do, get your like goals out.
It doesn't necessarily have toalign with what you want to do
from a climate change perspective.
You can always do that outside of your jobif that's what you're passionate about.
Right?
Now obviously it's ideal to find a jobwhere you can do both, and I suggest you
do that, but a lot of the times, sciencein itself does not mean political stuff
or does not mean something where you mayshow a bias towards doing climate change.
(15:18):
Science in itself has to be unbiased andyou have to test a specific hypothesis.
Now, testing hypothesis can meananywhere in science from actually
look going out into the environmentand sampling or looking at how people
react to behavior change that willlead more towards climate change.
Do you see what I mean here?
So these are the different ways thatyou can go into look at the breadth of
ocean conservation and ocean science.
(15:39):
Don't just look at how do mammalstravel or how do mammals breathe,
or physiology and stuff like that.
If you're really looking intoclimate action is how can you take
something like a marine mammaland make that into climate action?
How do you take a topic that you likeand make it into climate action from
a science particular point of view?
So I think that's where we needto really sit there and understand
(15:59):
that this is where you need tomove, but definitely move on it.
Do what you need to do toget your passion out there.
Be passionate, be authentic to yourself.
Use your own voice, butdefinitely take action.
You may need to adapt.
It may not work what you want todo, and so listen to what people
have done to see what's worked forthem and what may not work for you.
(16:21):
You can always try it and repeat itand see if it works for you, but also
adapt to what they've done and see howyou can get around the hurdles that
they faced and stand on their shoulders
to be able to build on what theycouldn't go further in doing.
You know, that's whatscience all is, right?
When we take science and we tryand build on the knowledge that
one research paper gives, we tryand build it on the next, right?
(16:41):
And we try and build moreinformation on that topic, and
that's how we understand that topic.
So understanding how we can do climateaction, how people can do it, whether
it's from a behavioral change standpointor how do we get policy in there?
Or even how people elect, or even froma scientific standpoint in the ocean,
how do we get people to understandwhat's going on is the biggest thing.
So do what you need to do.
Obviously I'm more communication focused,but do what you think you need to do.
(17:05):
Use that wonderful mind of yours.
Use that passion of yours andsay, I am going to change things.
I'm not gonna let anybody talk me out ofit, but I'm gonna listen to them because
they come with experience and they comewith challenges, and they may or may not
have been able to overcome all of theirchallenges, but I'm gonna listen to them.
I'm gonna say, okay, I'm gonnastand on your shoulders and I'm
gonna build upon them, but I'mnot gonna take your negativity to
(17:26):
say, I'm not gonna do anything.
I'm just gonna put my head downand do what I'm supposed to do.
We need change.
We need rebels.
We need people who are gonna say,no, I'm not gonna take the status quo
and I'm gonna continue to do that.
That's why I'm doing thispodcast, to be honest.
So that's what it is.
And you may not see change rightaway, and you have to be patient.
But I say go for it and Ihope this message helps.
So, that's it for today's episode.
If you have any more questionsor comments, you know how to get
(17:47):
ahold of me, you can email me againfor the person who emailed me.
I didn't wanna mention your name 'cause Ididn't ask beforehand if I could do this.
But once I read the email, Iwas inspired to record this
episode because of that person.
So I really appreciate you emailing me.
I will email you back.
That's it.
If you wanna also get aholdof me on Instagram, dm me
at how to protect the ocean.
But we need to change and we need todo things that will help us change.
(18:08):
So, learn, adapt, act, learn, adapt, act.
Continue to do that.
That's it for this episode.
I wanna thank you so much forjoining me on today's episode of the
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin fromthe True North Strong and Free.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you next timeand happy conservation.
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