Bill Nye: Want to Combat Climate Change? Talk about It. | Big Think

So people say to me, "Bill Nye, what can I do about climate change?" And these days I acknowledge that not wasting water bottles, not throwing newspapers away, recycling—that’s all good and important. Driving less, driving smaller cars or more efficient cars, electric cars.

But the main thing we can all do about climate change right now is talk about it. We just talk about climate change and raise awareness of it. Then the world’s biggest economy, the United States, might lead the world in addressing climate change, creating resources of renewable energy—wind and solar, most notably titled energy.

Than we can export those technologies and change the world. So if I—since I believe that talking about it’s really important—I talk about it all the time. And that’s the more you think about it, everybody—97 percent of the world’s scientists—not 97 percent of some institute that somebody started in a remote part of the world and is making or releasing press releases.

Ninety-seven percent of the scientists in the world are very concerned about climate change. And you can look at the graphs. You can study the stuff for yourself. If nothing else, do this. Wherever you live, get access to the coldest temperature of each year for the last century. Unless you live in just very few places, you will see the coldest temperature where you live is steadily increased.

There’ll be some dips. There’ll be some ups but overall you’ll find it—and that’s just almost everybody who has Internet access can get those data that are available. And just look at that one thing and you’ll see the world’s getting warmer, everybody. The ocean’s getting warmer so it’s getting bigger and those people are going to get displaced, and we’re going to have to change our economy and where we do business.

We’re going to be abandoning—heck, there’s acres and acres of asphalt, roadways, copper plumbing. We’re going to be abandoning all that and it’s going to be expensive. So the sooner we get to work, the better.