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Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, signs a copy of her book, "Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World," after speaking at the Center for the Arts in Jackson on Monday.

It’s not about the polar bears.

Not in Wyoming — not anymore.

“If you ask people what’s happening as a result of climate change, people will mostly tell you ice and polar bears,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said Monday evening at a Jackson event hosted by the environmental group.

The problem, she said, is that Wyoming doesn’t have polar bears. Which means thinking in terms of polar bears makes climate change feel far away. Even though it’s not.

“So what do you talk about?” Hayhoe, a Texas-based atmospheric scientist, said. “You talk about our water. Our snow. Our recreation. Our wildlife. Our wildfires. And, most powerfully of all, how it affects us — our families.”

Climate change, she said, is a “threat multiplier.” It doesn’t directly cause natural disasters. Instead, it raises the odds of them happening. As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises, extreme droughts and wildfires and floods — like the one that shut down Yellowstone National Park in June — become increasingly likely.

Hayhoe pointed to polling data that found that 70% of Americans are worried about climate change, including 86% of young people and 83% of mothers. But half of Americans, she said, “feel hopeless, and helpless, and don’t know where to start,” while a much smaller share feels equipped to act.

She asked audience members and those tuning in to the livestream to each submit one word describing how climate change makes them feel. “Scared,” “anxious,” “overwhelmed” and “sad” topped the list.

“That is a very logical response,” she said. “But it’s what we do with that emotion that matters.”

According to Hayhoe, the key is focusing not only on the localized impacts of climate change, but on the benefits that mitigation and adaptation efforts are already having, such as creating jobs and lowering electricity costs.

In Wyoming and other coal states, she said in an interview with the Star-Tribune, it’s also essential to focus on the needs of coal-reliant communities and “think of what else could be brought in to provide jobs for people. Because that’s the ultimate goal — not just survival, but the ability of those communities to thrive.”

Carbon capture and storage have a place in that transition, Hayhoe told the Star-Tribune, but so do wind and solar, along with nature-based solutions, like climate-conscious forest management and climate-smart agriculture, and energy efficiency measures, which she said could slash U.S. carbon emissions.

She noted that those measures can tap into shared Western values by boosting states’ energy independence, saving them money and helping them protect treasured landscapes in the process.

“There never is a silver bullet, but there’s a lot of silver buckshot,” she said. “We need every solution on the table, which includes transitioning off fossil fuels in a way that supports those local communities.”

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Democrats’ efforts to curb climate change drew considerable ire from former VP Mike Pence and Sen. John Barrasso during an oil industry event Thursday in Cheyenne.

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, signs a copy of her book, "Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World," after speaking at the Center for the Arts in Jackson on Monday.

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