Jay Doubleyou: the issues around flooding: living on the coast
And the huge debate around climate change?
Jay Doubleyou: the issues around flooding: climate change
A new book out suggests we'd rather not know what's more than very probably going on:
Amazon.com: Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (9781620401330): George Marshall: Books
Don't even think about it: Why we are wired to ignore climate change
Published August 22, 2014
To create proximity we need to EMPHASIZE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING HERE AND NOW. In particular, we should BE WARY OF CREATING DISTANCE by framing climate change as a future threat for people far away and, especially, as a threat for nonhumans, however cute they might be.
Whatever the findings of psychology experiments with their weird experimental subjects, we need to remember that not everyone wants to protect the status quo, especially if they are already struggling against economic and social injustice. So we need a NARRATIVE OF POSITIVE CHANGE, in which our adaptation to climate change does not just protect what is already here but also creates a more just and equitable world.
We interpret climate change through frames, which focus our attention but limit our understanding — they allow us to exclude or ignore meanings that lie outside the frame. Most of the factors that enable us to ignore climate change derive from attempts to limit its meaning; that it is an environmental issue, a threat or an opportunity (but not both), a wellhead problem or a tailpipe problem (but not both). So, RESIST SIMPLE FRAMINGS and BE OPEN TO NEW MEANINGS.
Because climate change is a wicked problem, it can easily become defined entirely by its own framings and the solutions we propose, and policy makers can easily become locked into the simple one-off solutions that solve tamer problems. We all need to ENSURE THAT A WIDE RANGE OF SOLUTIONS IS CONSTANTLY UNDER REVIEW — a process that planners call iterative risk management.
Frames define battlegrounds, and so limited frames can lead to false debates. Arguments that renewable energy brings greater energy security encourage the expansion of domestic fossil fuels. Arguments that the low-carbon economy will bring jobs become vulnerable to evidence that the high-carbon economy might bring more jobs. As the cognitive linguist George Lakoff says, NEVER ACCEPT YOUR OPPONENT'S FRAMES — "don't negate them, or repeat them, or structure your arguments to counter them."
Climate change is a narrative, shaped through social negotiations and transmitted between peers. People form their response to the narratives, not the science, and so it always needs to FOLLOW NARRATIVE RULES, WITH RECOGNIZEABLE ACTORS, MOTIVES, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS. People will be inclined to follow the most compelling narrative, so be careful: DON'T LET THE NARRATIVE TAKE OVER the way we think or talk about it.
What is clear is that this is a fast-moving issue and everything will change. At present, climate change exists largely as a narrative of anticipation shaped by familiar experience and existing frames. But momentous shifts are under way in the world's climate systems and carbon cycles, which will, within a single lifetime, make climate change entirely real, salient, and unavoidable. Above all, it is critical that we CLOSE THE PARTISAN GAP between left and right by opening up climate change to conservative framings and ownership. This should start with AFFIRMING WIDER VALUES, which, it is well established experimentally, makes people far more willing to accept information that challenges their worldview. This requires communicators to reverse the normal flow that converts the science into people's values and begin by understanding and validating their values first and then come up with the ways that climate change can speak to those values.
Don't even think about it: Why we are wired to ignore climate change | GreenBiz.com
It seems to be about 'framing' and 'narrative':
Jay Doubleyou: how to spot media bias
Jay Doubleyou: positive power and influence
These are big subjects when it comes to communication:
Framing (social sciences) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Framing (social sciences) - definition of Framing (social sciences) by The Free Dictionary
Here are a couple more examples:
Is a pound of stones heavier than a pound of feathers? Of course they both weigh the same, but the decisions people make are remarkably susceptible to how choices are presented or framed.
Now scientists are pinning down the centers in the brain related to how this "framing effect" can influence decision-making. The findings could have a big impact on economics, among other things.
"Classical economics assumed humans are fundamentally rational and never really considered emotions quite important, but this shows emotions are embedded in our brain when it comes to making decisions," said Benedetto De Martino, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.
'Framing effect' influences decisions - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience | NBC News
Exactly what it means to ''frame'' issues seems to depend on which Democrat you are talking to, but everyone agrees that it has to do with choosing the language to define a debate and, more important, with fitting individual issues into the contexts of broader story lines. In the months after the election, Democratic consultants and elected officials came to sound like creative-writing teachers, holding forth on the importance of metaphor and narrative.
Republicans, of course, were the ones who had always excelled at framing controversial issues, having invented and popularized loaded phrases like ''tax relief'' and ''partial-birth abortion'' and having achieved a kind of Pravda-esque discipline for disseminating them. But now Democrats said that they had learned to fight back.
The Framing Wars - New York Times
So, then, how is the climate change debate 'framed'?
Here is the author George Marshall talking about speaking linking what people see and what people believe.
Click on the interview with Rob Hopkins:
George Marshall on communicating climate change following extreme weather events | Transition Network
See also:
Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change - The Washington Post
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