Why Science Alone Won’t Deliver Climate Action

What if the real barrier to climate action isn’t a lack of science, but a lack of pressure? And what happens when climate risk collides with political instability, fossil fuel dependence, and public anger in real time?

In this episode, I’m joined by Professor Dana Fisher of American University, author of Saving Ourselves and one of the sharpest thinkers on climate activism, policy, and public mobilisation. We get into what she calls apocalyptic optimism: being brutally honest about the scale of the climate crisis, the democratic backsliding around it, and the need to act anyway. Because the stakes now are painfully clear. Emissions are still rising, climate impacts are becoming impossible to ignore, and the push for decarbonisation is being slowed by vested interests just as the cost of delay keeps rising.

You’ll hear why Dana argues that science is necessary but insufficient for decision-making, and why public pressure is so often the real driver of climate policy, decarbonisation, and net zero progress. We dig into how repression can backfire, why climate shocks can shift public opinion, and why attempts to slow climate action may end up intensifying the response instead.

We also explore why this conversation feels especially urgent now. As conflict, energy insecurity, and policy disruption expose the fragility of fossil fuel dependence, the case for clean energy starts to look less like idealism and more like common sense. From balcony solar to broader questions of power, protest, and public pressure, this episode looks at why the energy transition is about far more than technology. It’s about resilience, accountability, and who gets heard when the system is under strain.

Dana's newsletter is at: https://danarfisher.com/apocalyptic-optimist/
And you can find her TED talk at: https://go.ted.com/danarfisher 

🎙️ Listen now to hear how Dana Fisher reframes climate action, public pressure, and the real forces that move decarbonisation forward.

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Transcript

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Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 0:03

The idea that you can just repress a small number of activists and everybody will say, you know what? Forget about it. I'm just gonna go home and watch Netflix, drink some wine. It's not gonna work that way.'cause wine's getting more expensive because it's harder to grow grapes

Tom Raftery: 0:19

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 263 of the Climate Confident Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. We have more climate science than ever. More data, more attribution, more certainty, and yet emissions are still rising, fossil fuel interests still have enormous political influence, and in many countries, the people pushing hardest for action are the ones facing repression. So what happens when the science is clear, but the response still falls short? What happens when climate change stops being something abstract and starts showing up in people's lives through heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and rising energy insecurity? My guest today is Professor Dana Fisher of American University. Dana is the author of Saving Ourselves, and she's one of the leading researchers studying climate activism, civil resistance, and how people mobilise in response to crisis. In this episode, we talk about her idea of apocalyptic optimism. In other words, being honest about just how serious things are without giving into despair. We discuss why repression can actually backfire, how climate shocks can shift public opinion, why science on its own isn't enough to drive change and why public pressure is so often what forces policy to move. We also get into the geopolitical stupidity of doubling down on fossil fuels, the growing case for distributed clean energy, and what effective climate action may look like in a more unstable world. If you are interested in how climate progress actually happens, not just in theory, but in politics, society, and the real world, this is a conversation worth hearing. Dana, welcome to the podcast you've been on before. Thank you for coming back. For people who might have missed that episode, would you like to introduce yourself?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 2:27

Hi thank you for having me back again, Tom. I'm Dana Fisher. I am a professor in the School of International Service at American University. I also am the Director of the Center for Environment, Community and Equity at American University. And I guess I'm most known these days for being the Apocalyptic Optimist. So now I'm really leaning into that. So in addition to my TED talk, I, did, which I think is since we last spoke. So I did a, Ted talk on to how be an apocalyptic optimist, but I also now have the Apocalyptic Optimist podcast and newsletter. So you can get, little bites of, apocalyptic optimism delivered straight to your email box if you so desire. Come check out our real talk about what's broken and how to fix it, which is what we're focussing on in the podcast.

Tom Raftery: 3:16

And we had a whole episode about that. It's nearly two years ago, Dana. It doesn't feel that long ago, it was May 24, so Yeah, nearly, nearly two years ago now. And it was just after you brought out the book, the one that's over your shoulder there, and you talked about Apocalyptic optimism. But for people who might have missed that episode, what is apocalyptic optimism?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 3:38

Apocalyptic optimism is the notion that we need to get realistic about the path we're on with regard to the climate crisis. And now I've been talking about this a lot of my work has been focusing more recently on what I talk about as the poly crisis that we're experiencing. That is the crisis of democracy in many places, particularly in my country, in the United States, along with the climate crisis. And as we know climate change is a threat multiplier. And while that is the case for issues that relate to the natural environment, it also is the case for social problems. And social conflicts like we're seeing around the crisis of democracy and the growing autocracy, which is happening in the United States, but it's happening in many other places as well. So being an apocalyptic optimist means being realistic about the path we are on. So not like filling our minds with hopium that everything's okay and we don't have to worry about anything, but being realistic about where we are, where we need to go, and then recognizing as, as we say in the podcast, how to fix it. So. Being an apocalyptic optimist means I do believe that there is a way for us to save ourselves from this crisis that we've created, the climate crisis, as well as this poly crisis that we're experiencing in many parts of the world. But we have to be realistic about where we are because otherwise too many people will be caught off guard. And that opens up opportunities for misinformation, which we've been seeing in lots of places. But if not, we can recognise where we are and where we need to go. And I believe in people power to get us there. And so that's a lot of what my work is about.

Tom Raftery: 5:12

And as well, you need to have some kind of degree of optimism or hope or otherwise you fall into despair. And despair just means you're going to give up and do nothing. It's only with hope and optimism that you can actually get off your ass and do something right.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 5:29

I think that there's a way to be hopeful, but be realistic and hopeful. And then there's a way to be hopeful and, believe in unicorns and rainbows, and I am a big fan of unicorns and rainbows, but I also recognise that the only way to get, over that rainbow is to. put on your boots and, probably step through a bunch of muck on the way. And that's, certainly where we are here in the United States right now. I think that's where we are with regard to addressing the climate crisis internationally, for sure. If we think about the status of the Paris agreement or in terms of the, way that the world is experiencing the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. So I think that we have to be hopeful and recognise that we still can save ourselves from the crisis, but. We have to recognise that we can't just sit around and, continue, you know, consuming fossil fuels and expanding our consumption of fossil fuels and think that the world's gonna be okay because it's just not.

Tom Raftery: 6:25

Obviously with the current war in Iran, I mean, that's another reason we should not be using fossil fuels, right? Because I, I wrote a a couple of paragraphs on a supply chain magazine just last night when it went live this morning saying, sun and the wind have zero problems going through the Strait of Hormuz right now. So relying on fossil fuels is an existential risk for a lot of companies because they can't get access to energy now, or they'll have, it'll cost'em a lot more to get access to the same energy than it did a week ago.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 7:00

There's been talk that everybody should expect if you rely on fossil fuels for your energy or your electricity, you should expect that your costs are gonna go up. I am delighted that my family and I chose to shift to solar panels here at home, and we charge our electric cars with our solar panels, which means that I pay $8 a month no matter what's going on in the geopolitical world right now to just be on the grid and then I actually get paid for all of the power that we generate and don't use. So, I think, you know, this is just another reason to recognise that this transition to clean energy makes a lot of sense, because it also means that we're no longer reliant on resources being extracted from somewhere else that have to go through and deal with all of these geopolitical stressors. So, anybody who can right now, I think this is a great time to get on solar power or wind power if you can do it, but I know there's a lot more infrastructure involved, so that's not as easy and as quick, but certainly much better than fossil fuels right now.

Tom Raftery: 8:01

definitely. And you've spent years studying how people mobilise around crises. Climate seems to be entering a new phase of public response, would you say?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 8:12

I think we we're, we're still experiencing that climate is seen as not the main issue that a lot of people are mobilising around at the moment. We saw this amazing, peak in engagement around climate, in terms of climate activism in 2019, 2020 with Fridays for Future, and Greta Thunberg and all of these young people who were doing these school strikes for climate. That was a global phenomenon. It was amazing. In fact, I, I wrote a bunch of pieces about how many people around the world, in all sorts of countries were participating simultaneously in these amazing mobilisations. When COVID happened, one of the things that Greta and the other young people did, which I thought was so valuable, was that they said, we need to follow the science. And if the scientists are saying we need to stay inside to flatten the curve, then we need to do that. And so they basically encouraged everybody to go inside their homes and shift their activism from in the streets to on the computers. But we know, you know, one of the things I also study is I study about how online engagement is really different from in person participation. All we know is when you go online, you end up in these echo chambers, right? And you silo your communication versus being, you know, sitting on a street corner with a sign sitting outside the legislature or parliament with a sign where anybody who walks by is gonna see you. You have to actually find somebody if you're looking online. That really moved the climate movement into a new stage. And so now we are what, five, six years later, and the climate movement has not started to gain a lot of attention again in the same way. And I think part of that is because we're seeing such a shift towards like right-leaning populism in many countries. I also think we've seen a real pushback from fossil fuel interests, and we've seen them participating in, unfathomable ways even five years ago in the climate regime, in these international meetings, really limiting the ability of countries and individuals to push for acknowledgement that a transition away from fossil fuels is needed for us to address the climate crisis. So as a result, the climate movement has been active, but what we're seeing in a lot of places, certainly here in the United States, is we're seeing climate activism being bundled together with a broader movement. And what we're calling it here is Resistance 2.0, which is a resistance to the Trump administration and its policies, which includes resistance to, horrible immigration policies or resistance for immigration, justice resistance for peace, resistance for climate action. All of those things are connected together in this kind of larger movement that we're seeing right now, and we see that in a lot of other places. At the same time, there has been this shift for many countries, especially advanced industrialised countries, and I'm thinking about many countries in in Europe, in the UK, as well as here in the United States for repression against activists, particularly climate activists have been really targeted. That has slowed down the movement. I, it has certainly not snuffed it out. And in fact, I think that what we're going to see is the movement pushing back with more ferocity because of the repression that a lot of activists have felt and experienced.

Tom Raftery: 11:26

Yeah, I had. I had Jonathan Porritt on the podcast about six months back. He's based in the UK and he was one of the people involved. He, he's a long term climate activist and he was involved with the Extinction Rebellion. He wrote a book about them. He was embedded with them for a while, but as a result of his activism, he has been charged under the Terrorist Act just for protesting climate. It's not even like they did any property damage or anything that was just simple protesting for climate. And that's how Extinction Rebellion were basically, hobbled in the UK. They kept being arrested and charged, and they eventually ran out of volunteers who were willing to be arrested and have a conviction and go forward from there. So yeah, it's, it's scary and chilling times in that sense,

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 12:25

I mean, we've seen a decision and a, a legal decision against Greenpeace for their participation in, again, nonviolent civil disobedience against pipelines in the United States. What we're basically seeing is repression happening globally and it is encouraged and motivated by fossil fuel interests. Right, who are basically trying Oh. And funded by. Yes, absolutely. But I mean, one of the things that I've written about in many places is the way that we know that repression long term actually backfires. I have a piece that came out recently about how repression against activists in the United States and other places is going to backfire for the US government right now, because

Tom Raftery: 13:09

Talk us through that in a little more detail.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 13:11

The reason that we see repression from governments is that they want to stop activists. So they basically, even though historically we've seen nonviolent civil disobedience, that's peaceful protests, that is disruptive, like blocking a street or, there's been a lot of crazy glue, maybe even throwing like some of this the biodegradable paint washes away and doesn't hurt anything. All of that is really, it's performative and it's not harmful. It is very much nonviolent. Nobody gets hurt, no property gets hurt. It's very nonviolent and peaceful and it's intentionally designed that way. The goal of repression is to basically target the people who are doing this with the hope that it will discourage other people from participating, and we certainly saw that around Extinction Rebellion, right? We saw these substantial penalties for the people who were engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. We saw people serving long periods of jail time. I think Roger Hallan had the longest jail time in the UK. But so the idea here is that it will basically send people a message that they should not do this. And in some cases that kind of repression works for a short period of time. But the problem is that when the crisis, whatever the crisis is, rages on. I mean, and historically we've seen it around apartheid. We've seen it around violations of civil rights in the United States. And during those periods of time, while a movement may be discouraged initially because of repression, we just see more people rising up. And it also leads people to escalate their types of actions because they push back and research shows that they actually push back to try to meet the moment. So if you are being faced with repression, you push back harder. And that's the way that movements tend to respond because it's a very much a dance between law enforcement and activists to try to get attention and to try to build notoriety to try to change the public minds about the issue, but also to try to get the policymakers to respond and address whatever the problem is. So over time, what we end up seeing is that people who are repressed will, will just push back harder. And actually I just today, some folks who were affiliated with Scientist Rebellion, actually they tagged me in a post about a new paper that just came out. about emotional responses to state repression based on research around extinction rebellion in the UK. And I literally only saw this this morning. I, I just, I just printed it out. But it's a paper by Sunniva Davies Rom. Ram Ramit, I'm sorry, I'm saying that name wrong. And colleagues that just came out in Nature Climate Change, which is an extremely good journal, very good journal around climate. They've been publishing a lot of work around activism recently. It's consistent with the argument I'm saying about how repression actually does not discourage, but rather, gets people to hunker down and try to figure out what they wanna do and how they wanna organise to push back to power even more severely. And that will be particularly true, and I talk about this some in Saving Ourselves, as the climate crisis wears on, because it's not like the problem is going away. It's one thing if it's a problem that people can just ignore or it's out of sight outta mind or people aren't going to experience it. But we're at the time in the climate crisis where people are increasingly experiencing the crisis firsthand. I mean, I was just out in Los Angeles and in Los Angeles they're having a heat wave, so it was much warmer than normal. And while I, it's funny because I was in an Uber, an electric Uber, and the Uber driver was like, well, this is just glorious. It's 15, 20 degrees warmer than usual, which is on the one hand, nice. It felt like summer. But on the other hand, a lot of people were pointing out how it's extremely bad because if that's the temperature it is in February at the time, think about what temperature it's going to be when we hit August, and how that's gonna play into the fact that Los Angeles is basically a desert and very prone to wildfires. And we saw what happened only a year and a little bit ago in terms of wildfires affecting the city of Los Angeles, but I mean, the whole state is at risk. I mean, and we actually have a drought across the entirety of the southwest of the United States right now where areas that are known for skiing have had zero snow or so much less snow that it's going to be a huge water crisis come summer for many areas. And that's because of the climate crisis. The thing is that because people are actually experiencing it firsthand, the idea that you can just repress a small number of activists and everybody will say, you know what? Forget about it. I'm just gonna go home and watch Netflix, drink some wine. It's not gonna work that way.'cause wine's getting more expensive because it's harder to grow grapes and. At the same time, more and more people are gonna be like, but we have to do something. I can't just sit inside and wait because the government's clearly not doing it for us.

Tom Raftery: 18:06

And is it people's innate sense of justice that is causing this to happen? People see that the pushback from government is unjust and things are being done that just aren't right, and then people get their back up and say, well, I gotta do something about this.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 18:23

We see that kind of response and we call that like a moral outrage response. We do see that when there's violence, particularly violence against peaceful protestors, like we saw in Minneapolis since the beginning of the year. We've seen two murders by law enforcement of peaceful protestors who were basically monitoring law enforcement activities to make sure that their communities were safe and they were both murdered for it. When we see that kind of violence, it does get people pushed back and outraged out in the streets immediately pushing back. And we saw that exactly that way. It was classic textbook, what we would expect in Minneapolis, in the case of the climate crisis, what we're actually seeing instead. And there's been some really interesting studies that have come out recently about it which is in areas that experience climate shocks, and that is climate change exacerbated extreme events. You, your heat waves, your droughts, your wildfires, your floods. All the biblical stuff that we've been seeing. When those things happen, which are exacerbated by climate change, if you look at their attitudes around climate change, climate action, and, and even broad engagement in their communities, what we're seeing is that it goes up. So even people who are climate deniers and have been fed a lot of climate misinformation. Even their opinions have shifted after experiencing the climate crisis firsthand. In that case, it's not really about saying, oh, those people shouldn't be repressed. It's more, why aren't there more people doing something? We need to do something. If you arrest everybody who was involved in climate activism. we have a renewable resource of human beings who are gonna care about the climate crisis because it's getting worse and worse. So more people will just come out every day. We'll see more people. and that's basically, we're starting to see that we're still in early days, but unfortunately given what we're seeing with concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere going up and average temperatures going up, I think we're about to enter back into an El Nino. And an El Nino means that we see more warming even than normal. So we're basically gonna have more heat waves, more lives lost, more people needing to relocate. All of that will cause social conflict, which will lead to more people feeling like they have to push back against decision makers who are refusing to take action against fossil fuel interest, which is, the root of the problem right there.

Tom Raftery: 20:42

Mm. And how important are things like attribution science raising awareness of this?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 20:48

Well, I actually, I, I have a project where I'm working with the folks from the Climate Attribution team, where we're basically trying to add a social layer to look at how attribution science specifically plays a role in getting people to mobilise. We don't actually know the answer to your question. I mean, it's a very good question, Tom, so I should just have started with that. We don't know yet, but we need to know, and what we also need to know is where is misinformation getting in and blocking some some people from understanding and believing the science when they're given the science, because we've seen examples of that. For example, during the LA wildfires, there were people who were given information that it wasn't actually due to, climate change, exacerbated drought, but rather it was because of the governor's decisions, or we saw it when there were hurricanes and deadly floods in many parts of the world. So we need to understand that. And while, some of my colleagues who do the attribution science have been churning out these scientific information to show how much climate change is playing a role in these extreme events. We also need to understand the dynamics through which people get their information. And we know that the media environment has changed substantially. We know that many people go into these silos where they only get their information from very specific sources, be they hopefully cool podcasts like yours. But in many cases, podcasts that are, promoting misinformation and science denial. And in those situations what we need to figure out is how do we break through it? So we need to understand that dynamic better, and that's what this project is about. But I think climate attribution science is going to play a very substantial role, but it has to be partnered with a broader social understanding of how people get information and how they digest information. And then how they use that information for decision making. So I have a couple projects that are in development and we're working on getting seed funding to try to start to understand those dynamics because, as Bob Watson, who used to be the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change many years ago when I was doing my dissertation, so this was in the 1990s, , he said, science is necessary but insufficient for decision making. And he was absolutely right, although at the time, a lot of people thought if we had enough science that said climate change is happening. It's caused by human activity, and human activity needs to change to stop climate change. Well, we have so much science. I mean, at this point, the science is very, very clear.

Tom Raftery: 23:10

Yeah.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 23:11

But we still haven't changed behaviors, so science isn't enough. So we now need to figure out what do we need to do to partner with the science to get that science to the right people? And the answer is not just the decision makers. The decision makers have known the science and have been given the science, spoon fed it by the IPCC for decades now. What we really need to do is figure out how to get to the people. And so that's a lot of the work that I've been doing.

Tom Raftery: 23:33

And when that gets to the people, what are the tactics that are proving most effective in the movement, in the resistance? What can we do? What will we do? What should we do?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 23:50

We can do anything and everything we set our minds to. So, I mean, as I talk about in Saving Ourselves, we don't all have to be activists. You don't all have to throw soup or glue yourself to something to save the world. What you have to do is figure out where you are most comfortable. One of my colleagues and I had a conversation recently about the types of repression we're starting to see and the growing autocracy in the United States. And he said, actually, he's like, I actually would amend that and say we all need to do anything we're willing to, and we have to be comfortable getting a little uncomfortable at this point because things are getting so bad that we can't just sit down and just be like, okay, I'm happy focusing specifically on just electric school buses, which was my favorite example when I, wrote Saving Ourselves. Some people just wanna focus on that. It's a good start, but at this point we need more and we need more people to get involved as fast as possible. So in terms of what tactics work, what my research finds is it's a diversity of tactics that work. So it's really important to have the people who are just working to try to inform and lobby and get the information out to legislators about what is needed and that there's popular demand for climate action. That can be done through your peaceful marches, your lobbying, your letter writing, your going to, town halls where you can meet with elected officials. Those places are great places to deliver that information. And what you need to do is show that there is a real collective support for these types of actions for a transition away from fossil fuels, for example. At the same time, research shows that there is a very valuable role to be played for the groups that I call the shockers and the disruptors because what they really do, is they help to draw more attention to the issue, to the crisis, and that involves nonviolent civil disobedience, which we're seeing more and more of the general public in the United States having a taste for that kind of activism because that activism a lot of people are starting to feel is necessary to push back to the growing repression. That type of activism gets more attention from the general public because the media tends to cover it more. I mean, that's why people throw soup. They don't throw soup because they like get to see soup on the covering of paintings. They throw soup to get media attention. I've done so many I media hits where basically somebody's like, somebody threw soup. Somebody threw paint. Dana, you need to tell us why would they do such a thing? And I said, they do such a thing because now I, a person who was a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now doing national media telling you why we need to think about the climate crisis and why people are willing to risk going to jail to get the word out about the climate crisis. And what we know about this is that when these kinds of performative tactics that are disruptive when they happen, while they're very unpopular, generally they do tip opinions of sympathizers. That is people who care about the issue but are not yet mobilised. What we see people doing after that is they don't say, oh, I wanna sign me up. I'm gonna go throw soup. They say, instead, this is an issue. I don't like this tactic, but something needs to be done. I am going to get involved in more moderate factions of the movement. And that's really how, what we call the radical flank, that's how it works. And while there has been some research that uses these computer simulations where they ask random samples of people online. If you experienced this, what would you do? They tend to find that this is quite unpopular and not effective. The people who do the research and look at the actual effects of the actual activism and real people responding to that, there's been growing research on that using Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, as well as some activism here in the United States. People who actually experience the activism have very different views and we see much more positive response, not in terms of the specific tactic. Like most people say, I don't like you blocking traffic or sitting down in front of this, or gluing yourself or whatever. But I think this is an important issue and I want to get involved. And we see consistently over time that that continues to happen. So it's very clear that that is helping. So we need that part of the movement. Some of the work that I do involves surveying protestors. So I go out to these legally permitted marches, like the large scale marches that have been happening. I've collected data at all the No Kings days that we have. We have another one coming up at the end of March. We'll be out with a team. We collect data there. I work with the organizers and survey people participating around the country. And one of the things that I originally started asking because I thought we could understand, more about who supports and who doesn't support civil disobedience, is I asked this question, do you support organisations participating in nonviolent civil disobedience? I ask everybody, and I thought, oh, well, we could see what the patterns are for people who does support and who doesn't. But I can't do that because over 95% of the people who I survey at any one of these legally permitted protests, support organisations doing this type of activism. The individual may not personally wanna do it, but they support it and believe it is a necessary part of the movement. And that's what the research finds is we need the whole full range. We need like the wide toolbox of tactics to be involved, particularly because the poly crisis is upon us and the climate crisis is worsening, and we are fast approaching these tipping points, which my colleagues and the natural scientists have been screaming about, unfortunately for years. And the screaming's getting louder because we are so close to these tipping points. That will basically make climate change irreversible and will have such horrible effects on our natural environments, but also on society because there are many areas where humans will not be able to continue to live if we keep going in this way. And so this is a moment when we need it. We have an all hands on deck type of an opportunity for everybody to get involved and even get a little uncomfortable, as my colleague suggested, That's exactly what happens. People stand up to repression, they push back. Sometimes martyrs are necessary as well. They play a role in, some of the most successful and effective social movements. And it's horrible and unfortunate. But there is a role there and we may need to see that more and more.

Tom Raftery: 30:01

That doesn't bear thinking about, but I, get what you're saying. Many business leaders, and I speak to a lot of business leaders on this podcast and my other podcast as well, a lot of them believe that policy drives climate progress. How much of that progress actually starts do you think, with public pressure?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 30:50

I think most of it starts with public pressure. One of the reasons for that is that fossil fuel interests have tentacles throughout decision making, throughout the policymaking hierarchy in most countries, and particularly in any country that has actual natural resource endowments that are fossil fuel based. Those fossil fuel interests have really captured decision making and have, privileged access to the resources. In many cases, they get access to, resources and they get subsidised to extract those resources, but they also have access to power. And we've seen research that shows how we see people who take money from fossil fuel interests. But say they care about climate change and wanna do something about climate change, what we see is anybody who's taken that money tends to vote with the people who give them money, not with what they say they care about. The policy makers who are acting on climate either were brought into office because they ran saying that they think climate change is an issue and we need to transition away from fossil fuels. Or they've gotten so much public pressure that they recognise that they will lose their position in office if they don't do something about it. So it all starts with us. It isn't just, today I've decided that I want to do a, transition to clean energy, which initially is gonna cost us money and is gonna be a headache to do, right? the infrastructure requires, a difficult shift, even though now clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuel based energy.

Tom Raftery: 32:20

Yeah, I was reading an article just this morning talking about how the renewables industry in 2025 in the US still is booming despite all the pushback from the administration, and it's down to the economics. Economics trump's politics almost every time, I should say.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 32:42

Yeah, so during 2025, we saw the Trump administration, not very slowly, but basically tear away a lot of these incentives and programs that were helping to jumpstart the clean energy transition United States, which was just really taking off, But first of all during 2025, we didn't see all of those incentives disappear. They've now, almost entirely gone, the United States. So now we will see the real effect, the Trump effect, if you want to say that. At the same time, fossil fuel energy is really expensive and business leaders do not make decisions based on like presidential timelines, right? They make decisions because they wanna not have stranded assets. So they don't want to commit to fossil fuel based infrastructure that is not gonna be viable in the future, particularly when it's already cheaper to use solar power, to use wind power, geothermal, et cetera, and so forth. So I think that that is really helping to maintain commitment to clean energy. but In my state, we're seeing efforts by the state to try to continue to incentivise people to work towards this transition. I mean, it certainly is gonna slow process and we've seen that the administration tried to stop permits for wind energy, wind power plants that were going up, and that has been overturned by judicial review. But we still have seen so many efforts by the administration to stall the clean energy transition which is just really unfortunate because what's gonna happen is the United States is gonna fall behind. We're gonna fall behind in terms of our technology. But at the same time, there still is going to be a clean energy transition there. it is destiny.

Tom Raftery: 34:29

I've written about this on my blog as well. The fact that Europe to a certain extent and China particularly, are. throwing all their investments behind the energy transition. They're plowing ahead with renewables and storage and HVDC and Ultra HVDC corridors. The transition to the electrification of transportation is just proceeding, at an incredible lick and at the same time, then you have the US backpedalling furiously, and you know, it's like they're investing in blockbuster or film or of these ancient technologies. it's just incredibly ridiculous because it's the future

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 35:11

Yeah. I mean the, the administration right now is incentivising energy companies not to retire coal-fired power plants where they already had invested in transitions away from that. They can't stop it, really. But they can slow it and certainly slowing it is really bad because we know from, the way that people have analyzed the effects of the Paris agreement that we have just not gotten where we need to go with regard to reducing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement, so is no longer even keeping track of emissions by design, but the thing is that that won't, stop the climate crisis for sure. I mean, if you put your head in the sand, you still end up in the storm. But in addition to that, I think that the consumer is going to demand the cheaper, more reliable, clean energy.

Tom Raftery: 36:04

Yeah, absolutely. Particularly as we said at the start with the war, increasing the price even more of, of fossil fuels.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 36:11

there are murmurs already about how the administration seems committed to investing in this war for a while. So this is not like a little blip. This may very well be a long term project. And this war type of a project is going to have a negative effect, certainly on oil access for many countries, but certainly in the United States. So anybody who can clean energy is the answer. And I mean, I to say one thing, I've been spending a lot of time learning and to understand better is, you know, this, what they're calling balcony solar, right? This solar for for rentals, which I know is really popular in Germany, but there's a bill here in my state where they're trying to incentivise people to try to install on balconies in other places if you don't have your own access to your roof.

Tom Raftery: 36:59

for people who aren't familiar with it, this where you get a single solar panel and maybe two solar panels and you can hang them on the balcony of your apartment if you're in an apartment building and you can just plug it into a regular outlet in your apartment and it starts pulling the energy in, and you can use that energy in your apartment. It typically will generate maybe one kilowatt 500 watts to one kilowatt. Not enough to cover all your electrical needs generally, but it will certainly cover some and bring your bills down. And if you, if you combine it with a battery, which a lot of them do have the built-in battery as well, it means you can use the energy that the panels are generating, when the sun isn't shining. So it's, a lovely little system.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 37:46

Exactly. I mean, and I think that there's a lot of discussion about how that will help to democratise access to clean energy in places where people rent and they don't actually own their homes or they're in more vertical housing.

Tom Raftery: 37:59

And it's not expensive either. I think those systems cost like 500 to $1,000, depending on the size.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 38:05

which is fantastic.

Tom Raftery: 38:06

Quick question because you, you mentioned that you go out to the protests and you talk to the people who are protesting and you survey them. What has surprised you most when studying the this activism on the ground?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 38:23

The first protest I surveyed was the COP six round of climate negotiations in the Hague. That was the climate negotiations where the United States had just had our election, and we didn't know if Al Gore or George Bush had won. I remember arriving in the Netherlands and having all of these Dutch people asking me about, what are we gonna do about our election? I was like, well, since I have so much control as you know, a PhD student right now, I can tell you. So anyway, at the negotiations, they had a large scale protest, they called it the human dyke, where people came in and they filled sandbags and they created a dyke around the building where they were holding the negotiations. So I started surveying there and that turned into this large scale project where I surveyed not only at Climate protests, but also during the globalisation movement, during the anti-war movement. And during the first Trump administration, I surveyed at all the large scale protest events, and that became my last book, which was called American Resistance. When Trump got reelected and people started protesting and I thought, okay, apparently I'm going back out in the streets to survey protesters and what's been really interesting to me recently in terms of following trends that we've seen in the streets is number one is that we, we added a question about political violence to our survey based on a national question that has been fielded nationally for a number of years. We added it to our survey instrument to ask if people believe that political violence, and the question is, I believe that political violence may be necessary to protect our democracy. That's the question. And we started asking that in the streets right after Trump got elected. And what we've seen is that that number went way up. That's really surprised me because left-leaning individuals tend to be much less supportive of political violence than right-leaning individuals historically. And so we started seeing a real increase in that, which makes a lot of sense given the behavior of the Trump administration and the violence towards the American public. That's something that I've been paying a lot of attention to. The other thing that's happened simultaneous to that, is we've seen, as the Trump administration has done these like occupations of cities where they come in and they do this, these efforts to basically identify, well, they say identify illegal immigrants, but they seem to be capturing a lot of legal immigrants too, locking them up taking children, ripping apart families. So in a lot of communities we're seeing protests emerge in response to that. And I've been really surprised to see the ways that cities have tried to use these really joyous tactics to do their protest as a way of showing that they're peaceful to the public. For example, we saw in Portland last summer that a lot of people started dressing in these like blow up puppets, right? In the beginning I remember saying, well that is just so weird. But it was so interesting because then people were able to post videos when law enforcement would start chasing them. And you see these people all like trying to run while they're in these frog costumes. The argument that they're being violent or you know, being domestic terrorists while they're these people dressed as frogs and they're just walking around, chanting no ICE or anti-Trump slogans. So that started in Portland last summer, and by the time we had the No Kings Day two in October across the country, people were dressed in these types of uniforms. And in fact, in Washington DC when I was surveying in the fall, I surveyed a unicorn, I surveyed a number of like rainbow characters and I surveyed at least one frog, but they were all over and it was like a very common thing many people decided to do is to dress up. So that really surprised me.'cause if you had said to me even when we spoke two years ago, Dana, and then next time you talk to me, people are going to be protesting, dressed in these crazy rainbow costumes in your country, I would've said, you're crazy and maybe you, maybe you've been drinking too much. I don't know. I mean, I, I would just never have believed that that was really where we were going, but it's absolutely what we're seeing and it has surprised me, but it is also sending this message of collective action, and one of peaceful collective action and like community support. I mean, the other thing that we're seeing now that's really different is historically protests particularly in my country, were all about like a march on Washington, right? So I was like, oh, since I'm in Washington, it's really great for me 'cause I study protest, and it was all about organising people to come to one location, to protest. And we saw that during like the Women's March, the first women's March, at the beginning of the last Trump administration, we saw at the largest single day of protest in US history. People descended in Washington DC And I was out with a research team. This time around it's really different and we're seeing much more what we call distributed activism, where instead of coming to specific locations for large scale protests, people are doing protests in their own town. And in fact, at the alst No King's Day, when I said I was going down to Washington dc I go to the metro, I take our public transit into town, and I was on my way to take public transit right near my house and right near my house, there's a, a metro stop at the National Institute of Health, which has been under siege by the Trump administration, where, grants have been cut off and scientists have been fired and et cetera, and so forth. And I was gonna get on the metro stop there and I couldn't because there were thousands of people there protesting at the National Institute of Health because we're seeing people going to local places to join together, embedded in their community, which is actually much better for politics when you're doing stuff with your friends and neighbors rather than, there is something beautiful about, you know, getting on a bus together and riding with friends and neighbors down to a collective location, but in some ways seeing this kind of distributed activism where these maps of people protesting across the country is really inspiring and we're seeing millions of people out in the streets across the country. And I expect at the end of this month, we'll probably see, the largest group of people protesting that we've, seen in, the history of the United States, but also during this period of activism against the Trump administration. That's something that I'm keeping my eye on, and that's something that I'm surprised by because I just didn't know that there would be this shift, but that would be so many people. I also just never expected so many people's livelihoods and personal lives and experiences would be so negatively affected one year into a new administration.

Tom Raftery: 44:55

We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Dana, quick question, quick left field question for you. If you could have any person or character, alive orad, real or or fictional as a champion for climate activism, who would it be and why?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 45:12

One of the things that's very interesting in this day and age is the way that social media has changed everything. many of our historic leaders of, you know, democracy movements around the world would never have survived the type of exposure you get through social media and the type of scrutiny of your personal life that we experience today. I mean,

Tom Raftery: 45:37

Yep.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 45:37

I, mean, I've had people challenging me because of the political views of people who I talk to on my podcast, for example. And I'm sure you probably have experienced that too. And and questioning me and my political ideals because of the people who I, I've spoken with that never would've happened before. So who would I, I would love to figure out a way to, mobilise and encourage and connect with the Dalai Lama and get him to focus on climate change. I mean, he is so inspiring and an amazing leader. I mean, I also, if I had, you know, if this is my dream right, I would have him when he is younger because I know that it's a lot harder for him now than it was. I got to see him speak once in graduate school and.

Tom Raftery: 46:21

Wow.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 46:22

It was amazing. Meaning he was in one of these huge, like a huge stadium where like the big basketball team played and there were thousands of us in the audience. But I felt like he spoke directly to me and I was way up and I still felt like he was talking to me and to, have that kind of inspiration. I mean, I also think that there's something really valuable about connecting with faith. One of the recent podcasts I did with my colleague Rayshawn Ray, who's also the person who said people need to get a little uncomfortable. he was talking about the work he's done with religious communities and you know, like particularly around black churches and talking about how faith can really help to connect people and help inspire people and help channel people into activism and engagement that is community embedded. And we saw that during the civil rights movement here in the United States right now, we've seen the political right do a very good job of connecting through conservative Christian churches, et cetera. But we're not really seeing it the same on the left and. I mean, I think the Dalai Lama could be inspiring. I mean, I also know that the new Pope is actually inspiring people around protecting immigrants, et cetera and so forth. So faith-based leaders could be wonderful if we could see more of an opportunity to connect people. I also know that a lot of young people feel very lost today. And this is the most isolated generation where ever, that has ever been born in the world. And part of it is because of social media and part of it's because of the way that technology and also having grown up during a pandemic also has isolated many young people. But any ways that we can think about connecting people and using those connections, social ties, social connections, and faith to bring about the hope and recognition of what's needed for saving the world. I think that would be great.

Tom Raftery: 48:16

Dana, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 48:23

I would suggest that they come to my website www.danarfisher.com and if you go there, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can find out about the podcast and you can also, you can see my TED talk right there on my website. So, come on over!

Tom Raftery: 48:37

Dana, that's been brilliant. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Dana R Fisher (she/her), American University: 48:40

Thank you for having me.

Tom Raftery: 48:42

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.