Illustration courtesy Ian Webster/CREDFor the climate-change message to finally sink in, for the 64 percent of Americans who don’t believe in the problem (according to a recent Pew poll) to start changing their minds, the place to begin might be the local high-school gym.
Have a respected teacher—maybe from the science department—lead a public presentation. She should mention some compelling data, but also tell about her summer trip to Australia’s drought-stricken Southeast and the dust that coated her morning tea.
She would say something like, “We can’t know every detail of what pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse pollution will do. It’s like driving your car off a cliff—you can’t predict which parts will break, but you know enough to know the results won’t be good.”
There would be plenty of time for questions and planning a group response. Finally, it would help to flood the gym so attendees could sit up to their ankles in water, to really feel what flooding is like.
Such a plan incorporates leading research on how our minds respond to the threat of climate change, which is neatly synthesized in a new guide, “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication.” The 43-page booklet was released Wednesday by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University, which conducts fascinating laboratory and field research at the intersection of psychology, anthropology, and behavioral economics (The New York Times Magazine profiled it last spring).
Aimed at scientists, journalists, educators, political aides, and “the interested public,” the guide begins with the blunt admission that climate communicators are failing. Global warming slipped to the bottom of a list of Americans’ concerns in a January Pew poll. CRED offers reasons why and suggests how to do better.
For example, people work harder to avoid losses than to seek gains, so “save money” might not be the best pitch for convincing people to buy efficient home appliances. A message like “avoid losing money on higher energy bills in the future” does better at appealing to this loss-aversion instinct.
To be clear, CRED’s researchers don’t suggest flooding the gym—that’s my scenario, based on their principles. Those include using:
- data plus narrative storytelling (the dusty vacation)
- analogy and metaphor (the car and the cliff)
- a trusted local messenger
- a group setting
- an experiential scenario (the water)
Happily, the guide has cartoons. CRED graciously allowed us to reprint them. Click through the following pages (see navigation at the bottom of each page) for an overview of the guide’s eight chapters, based on the illustrations by Ian Webster.
SmartPlanet is not going green
Messaging that can save the clean energy bill
Comments
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amazingdrx Posted 10:23 am
05 Nov 2009
Human induced green house gas climate change is a better term.
A much better polling question on this topic might be:
Should the US revive manufacturing and jobs by competing in the global race to end reliance on oil, coal, and fossil fuels?
Or:
Should the US ignore the problems of reliance on imported energy and the loss of manufacturing jobs and stay on the same course auto, oil and coal industry lobbyists have set out for us?
Or:
Should the US continue to lag in the manufacturing of electric cars, wind machines, solar energy devices, smart grid equipment, and energy efficiency devices, and continue to rely on foreign manufacturing?
Polling is a pretty ridiculous activity in general, but it won't go away. So why not design polls that reframe these issues in a more progressive light? These sorts of questions...Do you believe in global warming, the devil, fairies, aliens, ghosts, death panels, all have about the same usefulness as far as public policy is concerned.
Proceed from a faulty premise, and get lead down the garden path to an invalid conslusion. Did you see the latest Bachman Boener Newty over reach? "Tell your representatives! Dont take away my healthcare!"
It's the same with this poll. "Do you believe in global warming?" Converts in the minds of the under informed into "Do you believe it's warmer today than it was yesterday?" Just do the poll in the fall and the result will be easily forseeable.
And teabag the question into: "Do you believe the communist Obama administration, in league with liberal environmentalists, is trying to destroy our country with the myth of global warming?" Then you can get a riot. Hehehey.
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pcamill Posted 4:32 pm
06 Nov 2009
--Phil Camill
1. Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/2009/11/why-dont-people-seem-to-get-climate-change-overview/
2. Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/2009/11/why-dont-people-seem-to-get-climate-change-problem-1-environmental-literacy/
3. Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 2: Communication
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/2009/11/why-dont-people-engage-climate-change-problem-2-communication/
4. Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 3: Personal perception, values, and behavior
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/2009/11/why-dont-people-engage-climate-change-problem-3-personal-perception-values-and-behavior/
5. Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 4: Political-economic context (coming soon)
6. Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 5: The perfect storm of climate change denial (coming soon)
7. Ways forward (coming soon)
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pratishtha Posted 7:41 pm
08 Nov 2009
make homemade solar panel
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HQ Posted 12:24 pm
10 Nov 2009
Have you seen the new interactive global warming video Free Range Studios video created with the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE)? You should check it out! It integrates Facebook and allows people to be the star in their own video about global warming:
http://www.acespace.org/crush
Cheers
Heidi
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raffi Posted 7:12 pm
10 Nov 2009
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BrianF Posted 8:55 pm
10 Nov 2009
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latifah123 Posted 10:54 pm
10 Nov 2009
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