Core Messages

The core messages we took away from the book include:

Problems

• The best evidence we ignore information is that we continue to communicate climate change in the same way

• Climate change doesn't trigger our action responses
  • CC has never been a priority in any opinion polling
  • CC reflects a bad trifecta - lacks salience, requires short term costs to avoid long-term losses, and appears uncertain and contested
  • Climate change doesn't set off any of the four PAIN triggers we've evolved to respond to
  • Kahneman: "There is not much hope. I'm thoroughly pessimistic. I'm sorry"
  • Long-term uncertain gains coupled with near-term certain losses is a bad cognitive combination
  • People seem completely unable to visualize a future beyond 20 years
  • Policy makers are risk takers - so probabilistic risk assessment a problem
  • We respond to climate change with "meta-silence"

• Climate change can create extreme dissonance

• Bridging rational and emotional thinking is key, and hard
  • It's not easy to use museums and zoos for climate communications
  • Once things get accepted into the status quo, they're much harder to change
  • Personal "transformative experiences" are critical to corporate climate initiatives
  • The elephant rider as metaphor for rational vs. emotional thinking
  • We are constantly experimenting with bridging our rational and emotional reactions to climate change, but haven't gotten it right yet

• Some uncertainties appear more motivating than others
  • How can huge uncertainty justify military measures, but not climate measures?
  • How can intelligent people repudiate science and unquestionably accept religious doctrine?
  • Religion has to be more uncertain than climate change, and yet we accept it

• We are generally free to characterize CC as we wish - that's not good
  • CC is a "creeping problem," that we're effectively free to characterize for ourselves
  • Climate change is hard to "imagine," meaning we interpret it through pre-existing lenses
  • Focusing policy efforts on "emissions" misses key parts of the chain
  • If CC is the elephant in the room, it's a pitch black room and we each "see" it in our own way
  • If weather extremes are changing public opinion, what will be the net effect?
  • Sustainia is home base for climate bright-siders

Solutions

• There are lot's of things we can do better
  • Categorizing CC as a "tailpipe problem" has fundamentally skewed the policy response to climate change
  • Demonizing the "other side" on climate change is a losing strategy
  • Frames can quickly "mis-frame" a discussion
  • If CC a tragedy of the commons, coercion the only solution. But there are other ways to look at the challenge
  • Instead of "enemy narratives," what about "heroic quest?"
  • It's not clear that having children per se is relevant to views on climate change
  • The problem with "responsibility campaigns" is that they create blame, and they don't work
  • Using the term "we" can unwittingly anger the "non-we"
  • We need to create PROXIMITY with the here and now

• There are new things we should be exploring
  • Forgiveness research is a promising new area - no climate-specific work to date
  • One argument is that it's ridiculous that climate change is too hard - we just need to change how we look at it
  • Personal "transformative experiences" are critical to corporate climate initiatives
  • We need to frame climate change as an active and informed choice
  • We talk about stories, but "climate silence" is a huge issue. Analagous to our fear of talking about death?

• We know that situations exist where we act in ways that, if transferable, would help
  • In some cases we are clearly willing to commit sustained funding to avoiding uncertain long-term losses
  • There have been recent cases of impressive collective action
  • We do hold certain values sacred - could we do the same for climate change?