Everything All at Once: How to unleash your inner nerd, tap into radical curiosity, and solve any problem

by Bill Nye

  I can see how someone living in West Virginia could feel deeply conflicted by all this. The coal-mining business here runs back to the middle of the 18th century. For many families, it is a tradition that has spanned multiple generations. Even in its reduced state, West Virginia still has 51 minable coal seams producing 60 million tons of coal from surface mining and another 80 million from underground mining every year. More than one-third of the electricity in the United States comes from coal; globally, the number is even higher, at over 40 percent. Coal is important to the modern world. Problem is, it is too important. Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and coal burning is the number one source of human-generated greenhouse emissions. These are not matters of opinion or politics; these are facts.

  Not to mince words: The future of the Earth depends on coal not having a future in our energy supply. If we want to avoid spoiling our global commons, we need to move on and find better ways to get our energy. That is the tough message I was bringing with me to West Virginia, and I didn’t know how many of the people there were ready to hear it. I wasn’t at all sure they were ready to see the world through the eyes of an outsider far less attuned to their small, short-term gains than to the planet’s huge, long-term loss.

  On the way to present my talk, I read a message sent to me by one of the organizers of my event, which was held in the beautiful Clay Center in downtown Charleston. It cautioned me that “President Obama’s policies have hit the area very hard, so any talk of climate change would not be well received, unfortunately.” I looked up and remarked to myself—actually to the documentary camera crew that was riding along with me—“Well, that is unfortunate.” I decided not to take that advice. Over that year, the crew followed me from West Virginia to a few college campuses and on to Greenland.

  I arrived at my hotel prior to my talk with all the good and bad arguments about coal on my mind. Coal has a noble past powering much of our modern industry, but I strongly believe the “Age of Fossil Fuel” is coming to a close. It has to; it’s neither sustainable nor responsible—not for the miners, whose jobs will soon be gone regardless, and not for the rest of us, who have to deal with the emissions. Everybody needs to hear that message, especially those who are most directly affected by it. I planned to pitch to the West Virginians that having an economy based on coal was not a good plan even in the interim, let alone 5 decades down the road. As the film crew and I worked on some Kickstarter merchandise in a conference room, we noticed three guys walking around the hotel. They turned out to be none other than Donald Blankenship and his two bodyguards. Blankenship is the behated [sic] “King of Coal,” who was awaiting trial for fraud—serious fraud.

  Blankenship was notorious in the area. He was a vigorous promoter of mountaintop removal. His effort to undercut his rivals with shady real-estate deals led to lawsuits and fines. He wrote angry memos to his employees: “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers, or anyone else to do anything other than run coal, you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem to not understand that coal pays the bills . . .” Blankenship also wrote that miners should not worry much about “overcasts,” the improvised air ducts that miners carve into the rock and coal to allow potentially explosive methane fumes to escape. Blankenship said these “ventilation issues” would be dealt with later.

  Before “later” arrived, there was a huge explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine that killed 29 miners in a few minutes, some of them over a mile away from the center of the blast. By all accounts, it was easier to convict Blankenship on fraud and racketeering rather than the mean-spirited, thoughtless, and what became fatal routine safety violations. Before he was finally convicted of misdemeanor conspiracy to violate mine safety standards and given a 1-year jail sentence, he was walking around my hotel with his bodyguards and giving everyone the creeps.

  Meanwhile, I prepared slides depicting the deceits spread by climate-change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry and other slides showing the remarkable opportunities for West Virginians if they embraced wind and solar energy. All sorts of new sustainable jobs would be created. The energy would be generated locally, with minimal environmental impact. The water and air would be cleaner and healthier. And the economy would be more stable. Unlike the situation with coal, wind and sunshine cannot be driven out of business by cheaper wind and sunshine from other countries. Renewable energy is produced right where it’s used, in West Virginia for West Virginians. The state’s citizens could embrace their independent spirit even more than ever. But I wondered about those generations of West Virginians who had made their living from coal. Would the audience embrace a pointy-headed outsider with a message of radical change? Could my message resonate even here?

  If you want to change minds, you have to be ready to speak with people who don’t see things the way you do. I plunged ahead. Well, about 5 minutes into my talk, I realized that the folks sitting in the Clay Center were pretty much sick of the coal industry. As a longtime semiprofessional comedian, or so they tell me, I could tell by the timing and loudness of the laughs that the audience was with me. Now these were self-selecting fans, a group of West Virginians who decided to spend some of their hard-earned disposable income to see me. But I was in the same town where people had experienced some of the worst effects of coal mining. I went on to show that there were now just 30,000 coal jobs in the whole state, according to the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. That’s less than 3 percent of the population in the state. What I’m saying is this: Coal is big business in West Virginia, but it’s not that big, not anymore. I am sure West Virginians can be happier with a less environmentally destructive, short-term-thinking way of life.

  If you’re a West Virginian, your National Football League team is usually the Pittsburgh Steelers, because the stadium is right up Highway 79. On any game day, there are more than twice as many people in the stands at any NFL game as there are employed in the West Virginia coal industry. Speaking of Pittsburgh and the Steelers, the team is named for its hometown’s traditional industry. Today Pittsburgh’s economy is utterly transformed. It still has a little bit of steel business, but it has far more dollars cycling through health care, insurance, and communication. Your mobile phone might find its design and billing system directed from Pittsburgh. Buildings that were once black with coal soot have been scrubbed clean. Industrial land along the waterfront has been remade into a thriving retail district. Change is possible.

  As I spoke, I could see I was getting the audience on my side. They not only laughed at my jokes, they saw my point and they embraced my bigger ideas. They realized they could do without this industry of coal and gas extraction that has led to the destruction of the once beautiful West Virginian landscape. I spoke with some of them afterward. Yes, this was a Bill Nye audience, but it was also full of locals who were simply curious to hear what I had to say. I didn’t need to bully them about my way of looking at the world. They were ready to hear it. They were already thinking about the world beyond West Virginia and about a future beyond the next paycheck. I tried to offer them an optimistic vision of what that future could look like. Maybe someday soon, West Virginians will lead the world with their transformation to a clean-energy economy. Maybe they can become active agents of change. Here’s hoping.

  My West Virginia trip got me thinking once again about my grandfather and my uncle Bud. For my grandfather, Uncle Bud’s dad, the outdoor life was part of everyday life. In his time, cars were not yet available. Riding a horse was a required skill just for getting around and conducting routine business. It’s how you went to work and how you visited your friends. To support the equine transportation sector, there were blacksmiths, stables, mews, livery deliverers, footmen, and saddle shops. That all went away with the arrival of the horseless carriage. People in the horse business got into another business. It was not good or bad so much as it just was. Things change. Jobs change. Designs i
mprove. Nowadays, people ride horses for sport, but early in the 20th century, there was no reasonable hope of preserving the commercial horse economy and staving off the automobile economy.

  My uncle Bud rode horses, too, but for sport only. He became the “master of the hunt” in the Kansas City area, where he retired. The hunters ride around for a while, then head back to the main stable, where they enjoy a big brunch with orange juice mixed with plenty of champagne. From my grandfather’s to my uncle’s generation, everything changed in barely 15 years! It’s time for another big change—in our energy production.

  The documentary film crew and I visited the Boeing plant where I used to work, in Everett, Washington. We met a remarkable guy there. He epitomized to me the spirit of adaptation that we need in West Virginia and all around the globe as we change the way we obtain and use energy. Today, this guy installs flight-critical wire bundles in 747 aircraft. In earlier days, he worked as a stonemason and a bricklayer. He uses his same essential skills—his ability to recognize patterns and to lay materials in place carefully, reliably, and aesthetically—only now he uses those skills to make amazing machines that have transformed the economy and united people from around the world. He was able to adapt to a new set of problems using skills he already had. He was thinking in terms of the big picture and saw that there were new ways to make a living using his traditional skills. He tilted his head at the problem that faced him, and in doing so, he allowed himself to remain open to all the profitable opportunities around him.

  So here’s the deal, people: In West Virginia and everywhere else, we can see what’s happening with our climate, by studying tree rings, pollen counts, ocean sediments, and ice cores. We can see, hear, and smell what happens when we dig up and burn coal. Diligent scientists have filtered the data and evaluated the claims. If we embrace the science, we can see that we need to embrace all the better alternatives, everything all at once. You can help. In many parts of the country, you can now choose to buy carbon-free electricity. You can vote for candidates who favor emissions regulations and fair tax laws for renewable energy and who support the organizations that help promote these constructive ideas. You can volunteer or donate to help the parts of the country (and the world) that are most affected by the energy transition. You can help spread the word, as I did in West Virginia, that the move toward clean energy is a liberation, not an assault.

  To be sure, there will be disruptions and there will be pain. Some jobs will no longer be needed or wanted. On the other hand, there will be opportunity and joy. Renewable energy sources offer clean, longterm growth—very much the opposite of loosening regulations to keep dirty coal alive just a little longer. Some amazing new jobs will be created that will be available to people with every imaginable background and training. And if we do nothing, the disruptions and pain will be much, much worse. Earth’s climate is changing too quickly for us to adapt without some hard work. The information is all laid out there for us. All we have to do now is the hard part: Make big changes so that we can change the world.

  CHAPTER 26

  Security Through Nerdiness

  Times of crisis bring out the best and worst aspects of the human mind. They activate our tremendous powers of rational problem solving but also unleash potent fears that inspire irrational actions, or no action at all. And make no mistake; we are living in a time of crisis. Managing and getting past it will require all our nerd ingenuity—not just in design and engineering, but also in addressing our emotional needs as people. It’s that elusive pursuit of happiness that we want to pursue. It is with all this in mind that I was reflecting on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union speech of January 6, 1941. War was raging in Europe, and Roosevelt, like most people in the United States, was concerned about national security. The United States had committed to providing the Allied nations with food and other essentials by oceangoing convoy as well as equipping them with some significant combat equipment, including B-17 bombers and crews.

  Roosevelt recognized that it might not be long before America got pulled directly into the conflict. He did not want to see that happen, but even more, he wanted to establish a longer-term framework for a world in which such terrible and deadly clashes would no longer exist. In the same way corporate executives direct companies in a top-down fashion, Roosevelt announced a set of principles in his State of the Union speech to guide the United States (and other countries) through the perils of a world at war. If you think of a country as an enormous engineering project, you might call them Roosevelt’s principles of design. Or you could adopt the language of politics and simply call it “leadership.” The January 6 address has come to be called the “Four Freedoms” speech. In it, President Roosevelt said:

  In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings, which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

  Those first two freedoms are fairly familiar. Freedom of the press and freedom of worship are institutional rights in the United States, written into the pages of the Constitution by the Founding Nerds, er, Founding Fathers. Freedom from hunger or want: That one is more of a reach, what my contemporaries call a stretch goal. The United States is a country of great wealth yet poverty exists even here, and extreme poverty persists all around the world, so as a goal, it remains largely unmet. It’s fraught with distribution and cultural problems.

  But the last one, freedom from fear—to me that is a huge insight. Freedom from fear is what this chapter is all about. I mean, is such a thing possible? Is it even desirable? There are times when fear is useful or essential. It’s good to avoid taking steps that lead you off a cliff, for example. There is good reason we humans have such a strong fear response wired into our brains. Nevertheless, Roosevelt was right. We want to be the master of our fear. When fear masters us, the results can be anything from unpleasant to catastrophic.

  Mastering fear is key because fear really encapsulates all three of the other freedoms—or rather, the threats to freedom. It emerges from the sense that somebody else may take away something that belongs to us: They might take away our wealth, our power, our religion, our right to say and do what we want. Think about all the anger and conflict in the world that can be traced back to these different types of insecurities, and to the fear they inspire. This “us versus them” view of the world is sometimes known as tribalism, and it is one of the most primal forces in human nature. There is a group (tribe) that we identify with; and then there are all the other groups, which are competing with ours.

  In his “Four Freedoms” speech, President Roosevelt never used the word “tribalism,” of course (this was a different age), but he clearly got the concept. He saw that when the core freedoms are not satisfied, people compete and fall into conflict; when the freedoms are satisfied, peace can hold. Given the circumstances of the time, he understandably spoke of the path to peace most directly in terms of arms reduction. He was proposing that the governments of the world would be more stable and more secure if their citizens were not on a war footing. Still, he had no illusions that it was enough simply to get rid of the weapons themselves. Achieving peace required addressing the inequalities and injustices that led to the desire for weapons—that is, achieving freedom from fear in all its forms.

  This is a very nerdy, design-driven vision of politics, and 76 years later, it still strikes me as a brilliant template for a rational approach to global human rights. Imagin
e how much more the nations of the world could do if they did not need military spending. Think what we could achieve with a national and international consensus to switch to carbon-free renewable energy and to make it available to everyone in the world. The planet would be cleaner and healthier. Funds now squandered on weaponry could be directed to expand access to food and clean water, to fight disease, to create new technology, to explore the universe. People would live happier and more productive lives. Peace would mean less poverty, and less poverty would mean more peace.

  We have the tools we need to get there. The progressive legal structure of the US Constitution is one. Data-filtering to weed out deceptive and inflammatory information is another. Nerd honesty, collective responsibility, methodical implementation—these are all part of the kit, as well. But if we really want a more peaceful world, we have to dig deep into the human psyche and address the feelings of insecurity. Nerds need to go after fear itself.

  Fear causes irrational behavior, but fear itself is not irrational. It is an essential survival mechanism that focuses us on the most immediate threats—or rather, the ones we perceive that way. I feel fear that humans won’t deal with climate change in time, and I’m one of the most rational people I know (ha?). Tribalism, and the associated fear of people we perceive as different from ourselves, is not inherently irrational, either. We trust the people in our tribe because we know them, or because they are so much like us that we feel like we do. (Here I am defining “tribe” broadly to include those we identify with in culture, class, language, appearance, religion, etc.) Furthermore, if someone in our tribe harms another one of us, we share values and scales of justice or punishment. We know how the rest of the tribe will react.