Can The Energy Crisis Finally Unite Us?

Yeah, I think it's important, especially for the media, to cover the reality of extreme weather, of more intense hurricanes, for example, here in the Floridian Peninsula.

We know farmers all over the country are struggling with changing weather patterns or extreme weather as well.

So there is a real human cost here.

And the key is, though, to humanize it as much as possible.

Statistics aren't as moving for the average person.

How much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, that's not going to convince very many people.

And frankly, we shouldn't expect it to.

It's not something that people are just sitting around thinking about.

But when a farmer tells his or her story of how recent years have been more and more difficult or maybe how their farm is no longer viable.

When we visit people who survived extreme weather events and we can show right through the science.

Like I tell people, don't don't come around telling Floridians that climate change is causing hurricanes.

We've had hurricanes in this peninsula for at least hundreds of years.

Now, are the hurricanes stronger? Are they intensifying at a faster rate? Are they more damaging? Are they causing more flood damage? For sure, we've seen that on Florida's West Coast.

Yes, we have to tell those stories and tell the people the facts and show the reality of what this is today and what it is costing today.

That we definitely have to do.

But after we do that, We need to pivot to all the benefits of the clean energy transition and the opportunity, the jobs, the many, many positive factors that it involves.

It's kind of like when we're trying to convince someone to eat more healthily.

We're not going to focus on how hard it's going to be all the time.

We're going to talk about how much better they're going to feel, right? So similar in how we think about the health of the planet.

By the way, since you talked about the media, it is a common experience of The New York Times, of The Guardian, of Die Zeit, that climate stories that rely mostly on statistics and on the big picture don't really click and work.

Whereas, of course, daily affairs do matter to readers in any case.

Hila, we have to bring one more element to this discussion, which is also part of the title.

The war in Ukraine led already to an energy crisis in Europe, especially in my country in Germany.

The war in Iran now leads to global tensions in oil and gas markets time and again.

Now, as the title insinuates, could this be a moment that unites us in this way?