The earth is in trouble and nobody seems to care. That’s the observation of Josie, 15, who called the podcast after hearing more and more about humanity’s biggest challenges during science class:
“Hey Bart, I’m Josie, I just turned 15 and I am a big fan of your podcast. So I have this really great science teacher who is one of my favorite teachers ever, and he’s really passionate about a lot of things and will sometimes go on long trains of thought during class. One of the things he comes back to is basically how the well-being of earth is spiraling downhill and we will all be in serious environmental trouble in the near future, what with the spiking population and climate change. And then, once he talks about this, he sort of moves back to whatever lesson we’re doing – you know, Newton’s Third Law or whatever – and then I can’t really focus the rest of the class because I keep coming back to: Wow, we are in serious trouble. Everyone in the world is in serious trouble. Why isn’t this everyone’s first concern at the moment? Why aren’t we all trying to fix this? Is it because it’s such a great truth that no-one wants to actually acknowledge it? So, I guess my main question is: How do we cope with this really high probability that life on earth may be really, really miserable for us in the near future? Thank you.”
Bart Campolo and producer John Wright attempt to answer Josie’s question.
