Comments on climate code red: The real climate message is in the shadows. It’s t...

Jim, links have been fixed. David

2012-01-25T20:15:00.763+11:00

Jim, links have been fixed. David

The hyperlinks to the references in the text are n...

2012-01-25T15:50:51.303+11:00

The hyperlinks to the references in the text are not working. Can you send me the links for the US experts on health and the study of public attitudes on climate change.

Jim Driscoll--jimdriscoll@NIPSPeerSupport.org

...continued from previous comment There will alw...

2011-09-27T09:28:10.629+10:00

...continued from previous comment

There will always be denialists, either of the passive, hysteric or aggressive varieties. There’s a few ways to view this, which combined give a fuller picture. Looked at through a benign lens we see that any new paradigm or thing, be it a heliocentric solar system, or an ipod, will always find its contrarians or laggards. There are always some people whose identity is sufficiently threatened or at odds with the innovation, even after it has ceased being ‘new,’ and will reject it. This response belongs to a small category of people, estimated at around 15% of the population, and less than 5% hardcore, who we can safely say we will never reach. Looking through a more pernicious lens we see how vested interests (coal, tobacco) will engage in a conspiracy to protect their interests by exploiting a more general tendency of people to shy from the unfamiliar, especially when it is scary. This exploitation comes in the form of propagating lies that cultivate negative attitudes to policy initiatives, e.g. the current television ads. Or it comes in the form of supporting quasi-fascistic hate campaigns against climate scientists. This, you agree, is a sketch of the context we work in.

In other words, the denialism isn’t provoked by our message. On the contrary, the opposite is true. The meta-study shows that if we fail to tell people about the severity of the problem our message will not be effective at all – to anybody, no matter how open-minded they are or how staunchly or quasi-denialist they are. It also shows that there is no support for any hypothesized negative effects from fear appeals, when combined with strong efficacy elements. In other words, by combining a strong severity and efficacy message we don’t risk provoking an aggressive denialism as you claim. We do however, by using the health frame, create the opportunity of cutting through to an important population segment that we have to reach: the late majority. As I mentioned above, the use of personal stories of surviving extreme weather events that inspire climate action is likely to be one tactic that will relate to this segment. This is the tactic used, in reverse, by the mining company propagandists; just look at the ads: they’re full of ‘real people’ spouting non-truisms from the wider denialist narrative.

Lastly, I do agree with you that as the disasters become even more frequent and extreme, the reality of climate change will become ‘undeniable’. If the late majority’s mind hasn’t changed before then, this eventuality will likely change it. As for the hardcore 1-5% of denialists, not even this will change their minds. After all, 450 years after Galileo there are still people who believe in a flat earth.

Daniel Voronoff writes: Thanks for your comment D...

2011-09-27T09:27:42.472+10:00

Daniel Voronoff writes:
Thanks for your comment Doug. You touch on a number of important facets of the human experience of climate change, which I’d like to comment on, the phenomenon of denialism being one. Firstly, though, I’d like to revisit the main ideas of the article, with the aim of reaching a common understanding. In the article, I propose that there is significant scope for communication about climate change to focus more specifically on its human health and wellbeing impacts. To my mind this is an issue of strategic framing. To date, framing has been centred on its environmental impacts (Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park, butterfly extinction) or upon green jobs and a new industrial revolution in renewable energy. There are a number of reasons why these frames, especially the latter, depending upon how they are portrayed, can be counter productive, which I will have to leave for another article to discuss. Suffice to say, there has been no sustained public communication exclusively on the concrete, real-life impacts of climate change on people’s health and livelihood. Framing climate change around health impacts puts a human face on the issue and offers scope for relating to people about something that is very personal: whether it is their own health or the health and livelihoods of their children, elderly parents, friends, etc. So, I’m not advocating talking about just any old climate change impact (goodness there are so many!) I’m keen on us focusing on and projecting the frame: climate change is a health and wellbeing threat. Secondly – and this is just as important as defining the threat – is the need to project efficacy. The meta-study I cite in the article is quite clear on this point: a communication in which the facts are scary should strongly demonstrate a path for action, for participation in a solution, and ideally link people with the skills they need, and a supporting network, that achieves the desired outcome: in our case a safe climate.

There are a few facets to the hysteric and aggressive responses you mention. One facet, as the meta-analysis shows, is that failing to clearly describe the efficacy path can lead to these outcomes, as well as apathy and scepticism and probably a few more negative attitudes besides. Provided we are clear about the action-path, we should not be defensive about the honest truth; besides, we owe it to ourselves and our fellow-travellers, whose opinions we depend upon, to tell this story. In other words, while the evidence supports a strong efficacy approach to this narrative, the point I make to you is that we need to make the severity case because it is the ethical thing to do. And it turns out that the evidence supports being clear about the severity too.

continues.... next comment

The psychology of climate change denialism seems t...

2011-09-24T22:50:29.445+10:00

The psychology of climate change denialism seems to be very complex. You seem to believe that telling people just how dire the scientists say our environmental crisis is will have a net beneficial effect, that more people will be jolted into recognition and action than will completely reject the message. There are many in the climate change movement especially those that oppose incrementalism who would agree. At present I can't see that this is likely. In fact it seems to me that the opposite effect is probable - that the hysteria and aggressive rejection would only increase. I have no idea what can be done about this. Personally I believe that only major natural catastrophes have the potential to erode widespread climate change denialism and by the time this really starts to come about it will be too late for meaningful action.

Hi Tony, Thanks for your comment. You make some ve...

2011-09-09T22:13:14.759+10:00

Hi Tony,
Thanks for your comment. You make some very important propositions that go to the heart of the issue: what are we? How do we perceive and make decisions? Are we capable of solving the problem? Existential stuff!

I’d like to challenge a couple of the propositions, in the spirit of collaborative learning. In your post you make a distinction between emotion and the intellect when referring to facing and reasoning about climate change. The tendency to portray reasoning as a dichotomy between emotion and intellectual or ‘rational’ ‘faculties’ is very prevalent in Western thought, to the extent that it is a ‘common sense’ frame we apply to most conversation about how we reason. The frame, which describes a type of cognitive model, has been around a long time, it stems from the Enlightenment. It is still very much alive and well in our institutions, for example Treasuries, right-wing think tanks, media, and in corporations, which are dedicated to promulgating the ‘rational actor’ frame, where humans are coldly calculating maximisers of self-interest. On my reading of modern cognitive science this model has been soundly proven untrue in each and every of its facets. Rather, in contrast, human reasoning is emotional, and most of it is unconscious. Also standing in contrast to the ‘rational actor’ model is the finding that we are deeply motivated by empathy and reciprocation, the very premise of our existence as social beings, and our ability to survive and thrive. I invite you to consider that our tendency to co-operation is so in-grained that it passes mostly unnoticed; it is competition and conflict that stand out, and therefore appears more common, because it is against the grain of these human attributes.

We, all of us, reason according to deeply held, emotionally laden, beliefs, often referred to as values, which shape and are shaped by our worldviews, which in turn are fabricated over time by life experience, family, peers, institutional and social context. Getting back to our capacity to address climate change, I reflect on my own motivations for involvement and basically it all comes down to: I really like life. My life, my wife’s, my daughters, friends, family, the planet’s. This is an emotion, it is instinctual. It sounds ‘reasonable’ to me, and I bet it sounds reasonable to you. But this is because we share the same values and worldview. But doesn’t everybody want Life? Yes, they do. Our challenge is to find the terms of common ground. I believe talking about health, well-being and livelihood is one such space.

Daniel

Good article. An issue is that humans have evolved...

2011-09-08T11:45:14.872+10:00

Good article. An issue is that humans have evolved in a situation where they've never before had the ability to affect the climate, so what they did was, at that level, immaterial. As a result we have no in-built long term threat assessment and response 'mechanism'. We only instinctively - emotionally - look over timescales we can control, maybe days or weeks. To go further means engaging the intellect - but any response to matters like life/death situations is emotional, not intellectual. That's the barrier an effective climate change advert has to surmount.

Hi Eric, Thanks for your feedback. I also feel pr...

2011-09-05T10:28:55.407+10:00

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your feedback. I also feel pretty frustrated at times about the discrepancy between the threat and our collective response. As I mentioned in the article, the idea presented is really just a start. The reframing of the issue as a health one is the first step, and there are many facets of this framing. I believe there's a good case for modelling our communications on some of the excellent health promotion that's happened over the years and in recent times. Importantly though, and something I haven't discussed in this article, is the role of supporting the efficacy part of the equation. That is, messages only go so far, supporting the ability to take action by making it accessible, convenient and fun is just as, if not more, important. Door knocking is a good example, having a good on-line campaigning platform would be another. Looking at the surveys I’ve cited, it appears that campaigning to date has successfully reached the early adopter cohort and well into the early majority. We need to reach into the ‘late majority’, who tend to be motivated by authority and social norms, so messages from doctors (nurses, fire-fighters), or from ‘people like them’ who’ve experienced extreme weather events and who’ve joined climate action, would be a good place to start.

Daniel

Eric Ward, ChiangMai, says: Thanks for reporting t...

2011-09-03T09:20:02.976+10:00

Eric Ward, ChiangMai, says:
Thanks for reporting the research Daniel. I agree action should be based upon it.
However, the proposed friendly doctor's chat seems far to, sorry to say, insipid. Just compare it with the Grim Reaper where not even millions of Australians were at risk. Now, especially if we understand the rapid catastrophe which would follow a huge methane release from the warming arctic, the lives of billions are at risk of sudden death.
Perhaps somebody needs to let off an Atom bomb as a wake up call? Perhaps a TV ad starting with film of an H-Bomb test in the Pacific and say words like "and you thought this was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet" etc.