Season 8 EP 4
November 22, 2024
Shahzeen Attari - Environmentalist. Storyteller. Beautiful Thinker.
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On the fourth episode of Season VIII: Polarity - IU Edition, Carolyn Hadlock and IU students AJ, Mai, and Gracie welcome Dr. Shahzeen Attari, an Indiana University professor and climate advocate, to discuss the complex relationship between personal responsibility and systemic change in addressing climate issues.

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A.J. Rodeno, Gracie Westlake, Mai Wallet Mohamed

“I feel like we are really fractured in terms of politics and in terms of polarity. And I would say let's stop adding to that problem. And instead let's try to talk to people who are really different from us, no matter who they voted for, and say, Hey, who are you as a person? We actually are a lot more similar than you think.” - Dr. Shahzeen Attari.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Today we are talking with Shahzeen Attari, a professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. Her work on climate action has received media attention from major news outlets including the BBC, the Economist, the New York Times, and NPR. Welcome to the show, Shahzeen.

Shahzeen Attari:

Thanks for having me.

Mai W. Mohamed:

Hello Shahzeen, thank you for coming. I would like to start us off with the first question. Being from Mumbai, India, how has this shaped your perception of environmental challenges?

Shahzeen Attari:

So it's interesting that you think I'm from Mumbai. I was born there, but I grew up in Dubai and I spent 18 years of my life in the United Arab Emirates. And then I came to the US for my undergrad, grad school, postdoc, and now my job. I think being from the India diaspora but also belonging both to India as well as the United Arab Emirates has really shaped the way I think about the environment. Growing up in the UAE, I got to see how the country just changed almost in a decade from a desert to a metropolis. It was very, very stark, you get to see what development looks like in your timeline. That really shaped the impact people have on the environment. When I came to the US, I studied physics and math in Urbana Champagne, and then volunteered for Nature Conservancy and I was hooked on studying the environment. So that's my path to really just trying to understand what is the relationship people have with the world around us.

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Dubai’s remarkable transformation: from a vast desert to one of the world’s most advanced and sophisticated cities, a testament to innovation and ambition.

Mai W. Mohamed:

I saw that you wrote in your lab bio that you are a sci-fi lover. How has your love for Sci-fi influenced the way you approach your work ?

Shahzeen Attari:

Oh my goodness, I love science fiction. Science fiction sometimes also meets science reality. You can imagine things that have been written in sci-fi books decades ago that now have come to life, like the internet or gene editing. I think science fiction allows us to take what is real and based in science, but extrapolate from that. It helps me understand where the world can go. How can we imagine what the future world might look like? What are things that we can do today that can help shape the characteristics of that landscape? That's really what I'm interested in. There are a lot of writers that actually deal with climate fiction, a lot of it is dystopic, so it's really bleak. But there are some amazing books out there that help me understand, this is what we might look for in imagining what that world is. In a way, I think of us all as with the future and how climate change is shaping the future, and the present as riding on a bicycle but we're blindfolded, so we don't really know where we're going. So we need to figure out where we're going, and science fiction helps me do that.

Mai W. Mohamed:

While doing our research, we saw that you had a bachelor's in engineering physics at the University of Illinois, a master's in civil and environmental engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a PhD in civil and environmental engineering as well as public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. What inspired you to do all that?

Shahzeen Attari:

Someone might look at that and just think I was really lost in the woods, but I think there's a method to the madness. When I was growing up in Dubai, I really loved fine arts, physics, math and science like biology. I talked to my mom and dad and my dad sat me down and asked me “Why don't you do the physics degree because that might help you with employment in the future?”. And so I did physics and math at Urbana Champagne, which was a phenomenal degree. Professors there really took their time with me and I worked in a lot of different labs. I worked in a lab on condensed matter, and then I worked in a super interdisciplinary lab with biologists, fluorescence, imaging, microscopy, and entomologists all in the same lab. That started my journey on interdisciplinary work. I got into the master's program at Carnegie Mellon and I had to take a risk on myself. I had to take out a loan and figure out if I was really going to be successful at doing this? It was pretty scary. So they put me into the master's program and then I was able to get into the PhD program after a year, which was the year that a paper came out called Stabilization Wedges. And the first sentence of the paper says, “Society already has the technical know-how to solve the climate problem”. I started asking questions about, why haven't we done all of these solutions already? And that led me to studying people. And so that's how I got really interested in cognition and psychology and social behavior.

Mai W. Mohamed:

Your teaching at Indiana University has earned praise for being both engaging and thought-provoking. An example of it will be you winning the IU Bicentennial in 2020. What is your favorite aspect of teaching at IU?

Shahzeen Attari:

There are so many aspects that I really like about teaching. I think every class is unique because of the students that are in the course, and I learn a lot from my students. So for example, right now I'm teaching a course on energy systems and transition and it has 21 students and it's a master's class. And I've got students who are from Nigeria, from Iran, from Israel, from Gambia and Malawi. I mean, I've never been to most of these countries. And so when they come into the course, I ask them about what's happening with the energy transition in their country of origin? I feel like teaching is not top-down for me, but it's more like a tango. I'm dancing with the entire class and I get to learn something because I am a really curious person. So it kind of feeds who I am.

Mai W. Mohamed:

How do you incorporate your research and interests like storytelling or Sci-Fi, for example, in your classes to inspire students?

Shahzeen Attari:

Sometimes they wonder what I'm doing, which is pretty common. I teach a course on human behavior and energy consumption, and I make them read Ursula Lewin's short story, I think it's called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. So it talks about who should pay the price for society's development. And I try to bring that in. And in fact, in my course, the human behavior course, students have to actually go out there into the real world and change behavior and create YouTube videos about it. And so they become storytellers as a function of doing the work similar to how you all are becoming podcasters and storytellers from a function of being in your professor's class. And I think that's really, really interesting. A lot of those experiments fail and that's okay, but I think through the failure, there's a lot of learning.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Featured in Shahzeen Attari’s course on human behavior and energy consumption, this book explores the critical question of who bears the cost of societal development—a compelling discussion on responsibility and equity in a changing world.

A.J. Rodeno:

We wanted to touch on a little bit more on the concept of storytelling that you just mentioned. How did that become a key component to your teachings?

Shahzeen Attari:

Here's why I think storytelling is important. I think storytelling helps me blend fact with feeling, the heart with the mind. I think, in many ways, scientists tend to be more mind-focused and creatives tend to be more heart-focused. And here is a place where we can merge the two. Show me a person that does not love a good story. Richard Powers actually once wrote that “The only thing that can really truly change people is a good story”. When you think about how we navigate our world, we're going through narratives about what people believe about the world, about what shapes our society, who should be in charge, why should they be in charge, where does change come from? And so in many ways, I think narrative shapes our ability to deal with real-world problems. And if you just take that further, stories help us understand and make sense of the world around us, and I think we need to have better stories for what those worlds look like. Otherwise, people don't know what we're fighting for.

A.J. Rodeno:

We saw that you actually won an award for this in 2024 and that you had to go to the Storymakers program. What was that like, and how did that change or add to your approach with storytelling?

Shahzeen Attari:

This was an amazing fellowship out of the University of Southern California through the Wrigley Center there. And the fellowship was mind-blowing. They actually helped train faculty and academics across the United States on how to become effective storytellers. One person I met was Ed Young, who is a science writer, and he did a session on how to write effectively for a much more general audience. When you look at academic writing, it tends to be very straight-jacketed, whereas writing for popular audiences tends to sort of allow the writer to hold your hand and walk through the forest, which is really different from the type of writing that I know how to do. I'm actually trying my hand at writing and it's really terrifying because it's really different from academic writing. But I want to try my hand at that because, given where we are today, I don't know how much of a change academic papers alone are going to make. I think we need stories from a variety of different people, different stories work for different people, we need more stories about where we're heading. I don't think stories are a panacea, because stories can also be mobilized for nefarious actors. I think we need to be careful about managing expectations with what is real because stories tend to suspend disbelief sometimes, and help us understand what the science is really saying.

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Shahzeen Attari at the USC Storymakers Fellowship, a program dedicated to empowering faculty and academics across the U.S. to become impactful and effective storytellers.

Carolyn Hadlock:

We were speaking before the podcast about the new administration and the polarizing nature of climate change. We were curious to hear you speak about the polarization of the topic in general and what you think the next four years are going to look like for us.

Shahzeen Attari:

Honestly, I'm really scared about what the next four years will look like. What's interesting is that it doesn't really matter whether you are Republican, Democrat, Liberal, or Conservative, whether you care about climate change, or whether you should be agnostic. We're all in this together. This is our one planet, right? A lot of people in my field think that 1.5 degrees is out of bounds now, and so that means we're going to have to plan for a warmer world. And I think that there's going to be less action on the federal level and we're going to have to act much more strongly at the state and local level. And it's all hands on deck.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Do you mind giving just a quick brief about the 1.5 degrees, where that came from, and what that means for people who might not know?

Shahzeen Attari:

What that means is that we talk about carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, and we measure that in parts per million. We've warmed our planet 1.2 degrees so far since pre-industrial times. Psychologically it might seem like I can deal with another degree, but that has a lot of ramifications including melting glaciers, sea level rise, heat waves, wildfire threats, and hurricanes getting more powerful. In the United States, we're in a moderate drought right now, and so it's a multiplier of a lot of different problems. The big challenge that we're facing with the current administration is that new people's pocketbooks are hurting. The challenge is that if you start deregulating, that means some of the climate goals that we have are not going to be tenable, and that's going to lead to a huge decrease in welfare down the line. But because of psychology, we're very myopic. We care about today much more than we do about the future. And so that's again, another place where psychology comes in.

Gracie Westlake:

I'm curious as to what are some of the top myths in environmental consumption and conservation that you've encountered in your work?

Shahzeen Attari:

The first one is that “there's nothing I can do to help with the problem of climate change”. There's always something you can do. Whatever skills you have can be fostered towards helping with the solution. The second thing is “not knowing what to do”. There's so much that you can do, everything from activism to trying to get people who are in policy roles to act, to changing your own behavior. And then within changing your own behavior, a lot of people historically have thought turning off the lights is the best thing that they can do to solve climate change. It's actually a pretty small action. One of the other actions that you can do is being part of the electrification revolution that's happening. Think about electrifying everything in your home, buying energy-efficient appliances, trying to stay more local, and traveling less, which is a lot harder. Even as I say that, I tend to travel quite a bit and it's really hard for me to travel less, even though I do.

Gracie Westlake:

What advice would you give someone to gain more information about how to change their actions and what can actually make a difference?

Shahzeen Attari:

There's so much information online, and I know that information online now is problematic. But, look for sources that are credible, like the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and read papers in the field. There's a lot of information online about what people can do about climate change. And I think we need to change the social norms. How do we do that? We can start here. What are some things that students can do, and faculty can do to bring more awareness to the problem? There's so much that we can do, we can start talking about it. So the next time you're on a hot date with someone or the next time you have a friend's gathering, just talk about the climate, anxiety and grief that's surrounding it. We cannot be like ostriches, we can't just put our head in the ground and say, “this is really scary, there's nothing I can do”. I'm still on the side of the fight. There's still so much we can do. We can still prevent a four-degree world, a three-degree world. I'm still in that space where we still need to figure out how to empower people to not feel like they're a drop in the bucket.

Gracie Westlake:

Absolutely.

AJ Rodeno:

How do you think social media plays a role in raising awareness?

Shahzeen Attari:

I left all of social media maybe six years ago. I found it to be super toxic. I think each person needs to find what they're good at. And when you get worn out, you just tap out. Someone else will step in. If you are good at social media and navigating the very fast pace and sometimes the crazy things that get thrown your way, then go for it. I think that is its own skill, one that I do not have, but I think it can be really powerful in raising awareness. Also, people who are celebrities talking about getting out to vote or why climate action is important, but also everyday people. I think we talked a little bit about polarization and there's so much polarization around climate, but I don't know why there should be. I think we need to find ways to bridge these broken bonds of affection.

Gracie Westlake:

Can you touch on the perils of shaming and blaming and how that creates polarization in the United States or in the world in general ?

Shahzeen Attari:

There are lots of books that have been written about guilt and shaming and how powerful it can be. We've seen it act out, for example, when the plastic straw got stuck in a turtle's nose, there was a huge backlash and social media was actually responsible for sharing that information. And then Starbucks and others basically said, all right, we're going to get rid of plastic straws. Now granted, plastic straws are a very teeny weeny sliver of the entire plastic ecosystem, but that kind of tells you how shaming and blaming can work in a positive way. There's also the challenge of ad hominin attacks on climate researchers because of their carbon footprint. This is an area that we've studied quite a bit in our lab. What is the effect of me giving a talk about climate change and climate action and then having flown to a particular place to give that talk or having a large carbon footprint? I think we need to figure out what a different way of living looks like. One that is more deeply connected and one where we can reimagine even what our capitalist structure looks like. What would it look like if we didn't just primarily rely on growth, growth, growth no matter what? And I know these are super controversial things to say out loud, but I think why not work on what that might even look like? There's also this idea of decoupling. So that's been happening right now in multiple societies where we're decoupling, where we're delinking energy intensity from GDP growth. And that's another idea. Are we able to sort of peel back the amount of energy that we're using in different pieces of our economy and start stabilizing much more deeply and start using more efficient technologies? That's one of the many versions of the future.

Gracie Westlake:

I loved your TEDx talk back in 2014 where you discussed conserving energy and water and basically just how us as consumers, our simple day-to-day tasks such as using the toilet or doing our laundry affect the environment so much. I'm curious as to what has changed since then?

Shahzeen Attari:

I think we're using more efficient technologies in our homes. Our energy use is relatively flat, but it might be going up because of artificial intelligence and data centers. The role of electricity in our society is actually growing, so we need a lot more generation. To be honest, I'm not sure how much has changed. There's still a lot we need to do, and sometimes it can be really disheartening. We need to start talking about our role in both the problem as well as the solution.

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Shahzeen Attari at her 2014 TEDx Talk, shedding light on the profound environmental impact of our everyday actions and emphasizing the critical need for energy and water conservation.

Gracie Westlake:

I feel like it's common that people recognize there's an issue and they're like, we want to change and we want to make a difference, but then they just don't put the actions into a process. And that's one of the many things we talked about, the motivation deficit. Some people are used to their simple day-to-day routines, and they don't want to adapt to something different.

Shahzeen Attari:

I love that. And if you guys can figure it out, we need lots of solutions.

AJ Rodeno:

We did a little bit of research into your labs here at Indiana University and we wanted to know what about the labs you feel you can get that your classes don't teach?

Shahzeen Attari:

In our lab, we have students who are undergrads, master's students, and in the past we've had PhD students all working together on a problem. It's a relatively flat structure so that anyone can sort of jump in, and work on a problem. We've co-authored papers together on different problems that students have wanted to work on. Including one, which was about “why is it that turning off the lights is such a sticky heuristic and problematic heuristic”. This was led by two undergrad students who wanted to work on this problem, and we ran a survey. We collected the data, analyzed them, and wrote the paper together. I think working this way keeps the ideas super fresh, super interesting. It helps me understand how different people see the problem. It also is pretty wonderful to see where the students take the work once they leave and following their careers and their trajectories.

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Shahzeen Attari with her lab members and students, united in their efforts to combat climate change and advocate for the vital importance of environmental sustainability.

Mai W. Mohamed:

You just touched a little bit about your own inner polarity. I would like to know how you would help others that are going through the same thing, which advice would you give them?

Shahzeen Attari:

I tried not flying for a while, and that was really hard because my family, as you mentioned earlier, lives in India and I waited a really long time before going back to visit. Some people have given up flying altogether. I found that was hard. There are lots of challenges we face as people. Am I a city person? Do I want to live in New York City or do I want to live in Bloomington, Indiana? Do I want to spend more of my time teaching or more of my time doing research? What type of play do I want to engage with? What gives me joy in the world? How do I make space and time for that? I think all of these involve trade-offs. You need to sacrifice something to get something. And I think that's sometimes really hard because we might want it all. I teach this course in Energy Systems in Transition, and there's plastic everywhere in our lives, and it's tied to climate because plastic is actually a byproduct of fossil fuels. And so if you connect it back, it's actually yet another stream of waste and it has so many different issues related to it. So it comes from fossil fuels. People don't know what plastics can be recycled, and our recycling system is really messed up. A very small amount of plastic actually gets recycled. A lot of it ends up in places where it shouldn't like the ocean or in developing countries where they have to deal with our waste. There are lots of equity issues, lots of justice issues there, lots of challenges. And the thing is, if I said, Hey, I just want to stop using plastic the way you did, it would be really hard. The question is how do we make system changes a little bit easier for people?

Carolyn Hadlock:

If you're dealing with a difficult uncle or whatever, and he's saying there is no such thing as climate change. What are two or three things that we can say to combat that and still keep some peace?

Shahzeen Attari:

There are a couple of ways, and there are people in my life like that too, and these are not research, but this is just from my personal experience. I would say, all right, you don't believe that the climate is warming. What prevents us from taking the actions that are needed to deal with climate change that are also very well actions that can help us use less energy, have less air pollution that is good for both our health and everyone else's health, and give people more access to energy. Maybe you don't need to go through the path of believing that this is a problem, but maybe there are other ways, other parallel paths that will still get us to the solution. That is one thing I could think of. And then you can break bread and drink wine together and hopefully that helps. The other couple of things that I would say listeners are probably already doing is start talking about the problem, start activating about the problem and whatever you are really good at, whether it's podcasting, making movies or writing stories, try to put it through a climate lens and see how that can help with the solutions because we really are running out of time. The last thing is, I feel like we are really fractured in terms of politics and in terms of polarity. I would say, let's stop adding to that problem, and instead, let's try to talk to people who are really different from us, no matter who they voted for, and say, Hey, who are you as a person? We actually are a lot more similar than you think. Sometimes it leads to some really tough conversations, but I would encourage listeners to also try to do that.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah, I think finding common ground is something that these guys have talked about a lot, and I feel like the polarity is just, it sparks where do we disagree, where do we differ instead of where can we agree? I think that's a good idea of just sort of piggybacking it on something else that is, whether it's health or wellness.

Shahzeen Attari:

Wildlife or nature, walks in the woods that have started changing, trees have started dying. So it's just finding what helps people see things more clearly.

Carolyn Hadlock:

We are so thrilled that you're doing this work and that you are using storytelling and persuasion. I liked your advice too, of taking something you're good at and putting it through a climate lens. I think that's actually really smart.

Shahzeen Attari:

Thank you.Thanks for having me. This was great.

Gracie Westlake:

Thank you so much for meeting with us.

AJ Rodeno:

Yeah, thank you so much. You were amazing.

Mai W. Mohamed:

Thank you.


Carolyn Hadlock:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. This episode was created and produced at the IU Media School as part of the Beautiful Thinkers Podcast, IU edition. To follow along this season, check out @The Beautiful Thinkers on Instagram and LinkedIn. Special thanks to Bella Grimaldi for our music and the students who researched and recorded this episode. AJ Rodino, Mai Wallet Mohamed, and Gracie Westlake.