Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

by George Marshall

Overview

An Esquire Essential Book on Climate Change

From the founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, a groundbreaking take on the most urgent question of our time: Why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, do we still ignore climate change?

“Please read this book, and think about it.” —Bill Nye

Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world’s leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovered is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.

With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired—our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blindspots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, it is one we can halt if we can make it our common purpose and common ground. Silence and inaction are the most persuasive of narratives, so we need to change the story.

In the end, Don’t Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620401330
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	08/19/2014
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	796,994
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

George Marshall is the founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, based in Oxford UK, and over the past 25 years has worked at all levels of theenvironmental movement including senior positions for Greenpeace US and the Rainforest Foundation. He is one of the leading European experts in climate change communications, is a lead advisor to the Welsh Government, and counts major environmental organizations, politicians, faith groups, businesses, and trades unions among his clients. He lives in Wales. His website is http://climatedenial.org/.

Table of Contents

1 Questions 1

2 We'll Deal with That Lofty Stuff Some Other Day 5

Why Disaster Victims Do Not Want to Talk About Climate Change

3 Speaking as a Layman n Why We Think That Extreme Weather Shows We Were Right

All Along

4 You Never Get to See the Whole Picture 17

How the Tea Party Fails to Notice the Greatest Threat to Its Values

5 Polluting the Message 22

How Science Becomes Infected with Social Meaning

6 The jury of Our Peers 26

How We Follow the People Around Us

7 The Power of the Mob 33

How Bullies Hide in the Crowd

8 Through a Glass Darkly 36

The Strange Mirror World of Climate Deniers

9 Inside the Elephant 39

Why We Keep Searching for Enemies

10 The Two Brains 46

Why We Are So Poorly Evolved to Deal with Climate Change

11 Familiar Yet Unimaginable 52

Why Climate Change Does Not Feel Dangerous

12 Uncertain Long-Term Costs 56

How Our Cognitive Biases Line Up Against Climate Change

13 Them, There, and Then 59

How We Push Climate Change Far Away

14 Costing the Earth 65

Why We Want to Gain the Whole World Yet Lose Our Lives

15 Certain About the Uncertainty 72

How We Use Uncertainty as a Justification for Inaction

16 Paddling in the Pool of Worry How We Choose What to Ignore 77

17 Don't Even Talk About It! 81

The Invisible Force Field of Climate Silence

18 The Non-Perfect Non-Storm 91

Why We Think That Climate Change Is Impossibly Difficult

19 Cockroach Tours 99

How Museums Struggle to Tell the Climate Story

20 Tell Me a Story 105

Why Lies Can Be So Appealing

21 Powerful Words 109

How the Words We Use Affect the Way We feel

22 Communicator Trust 116

Why the Messenger Is More Important than the Message

23 If They Don't Understand the Theory, Talk About It Over and Over and Over Again 121

Why Climate Science Does Not Move People

24 Protect, Ban, Save, and Stop 127

How Climate Change Became Environmentalist

25 Polarization 135

Why Polar Bears Make It Harder to Accept Climate Change

26 Turn Off Your Lights or the Puppy Gets It 138

How Doomsday Becomes Dullsville

27 Bright-siding 145

The Dangers of Positive Dreams

28 Winning the Argument 150

How a Scientific Discourse Turned into a Debating Slam

29 Two Billion Bystanders 155

How Live Earth Tried and Failed to Build a Movement

30 Postcard from Hopenhagen 159

How Climate Negotiations Keep Preparing for the Drama Yet to Come

37 Precedents and Presidents 162

How Climate Policy Lost the Plot

32 Wellhead and Tailpipe 168

Why We Keep Fueling the Fire We Want to Put Out

33 The Black Gooey Stuff 175

Why Oil Companies Await Our Permission to Co Out of Business

34 Moral Imperatives 182

How We Diffuse Responsibility for Climate Change

35 What Did You Do in the Great Climate War, Daddy? 187

Why We Don't Really Care What Our Children Think

36 The Power of One 192

How Climate Change Became Your Fault

37 Degrees of Separation 198

How the Climate Experts Cope with What They Know

38 Intimations of Mortality 205

Why the Future Goes Dark

39 From the Head to the Heart 211

The Phony Division Between Science and Religion

40 Climate Conviction 217

What the Green Team Can Learn from the God Squad

41 Why We Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change… And Why We Are Wired to Take Action 226

42 In a Nutshell 231

Some Personal and Highly Biased ideas for Digging Our Way Out of This Hole

Four Degrees: Why This Book Is Important 239

References, Sources, and Further Reading 243

Acknowledgments 249

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

06/02/2014
“Why do the victims of flooding, drought, and severe storms become less willing to talk about climate change or even accept that it is real?” Environmentalist Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, explores this and a host of other questions in an alternately enlightening, yet labored examination of the reasons people have difficulty accepting climate change, even when presented with mountains of evidence. He draws heavily upon interviews with scientists and policy makers, as well as with individuals who have faced the ravages of severe flood or drought, offering several reasons why we have a hard time accepting the reality of climate change. For one, we often believe what we want to believe: “if you are already inclined... to see climate change as dangerous, then it looks really dangerous. If you are not inclined that way, then it looks exaggerated.” Moreover, climate change is generally framed as a finite challenge that can be resolved or overcome, like winning a military victory. Marshall concludes by pointing out that multiple interpretations of climate change contain the central reason we can ignore it: “these constructed narratives become so culturally specific that people who do not identify with values can reject the issue they explain.” (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

[Marshall] offers advice on confronting climate change head on, stepping away from Green Guilt, and putting potentially world-saving policies into action.” —The Boston Globe

“Intelligent and genial . . . In the end, Marshall is neither fatalistic nor idealistic about our chances of survival. Yes, he says, we're wired to ignore climate change. But we're also wired to do something about it.” —Washington Post

“Clearly we're not responding to the reality of climate change with the speed the crisis requires. This book explains some of the reasons that could be—and how we might work around them in the short time that we have.” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

“The science of climate change is easy: burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gasses that are warming our world. George Marshall reminds us about the hard part: connecting the wellhead to the tailpipe in people's minds as soon as possible. Please read this book, and think about it. Let's get to work.” —Bill Nye

“Illuminating and important—makes clear why we continue down a dangerous path of increasing climate disruption, even when attractive, hospitable, alternative paths are available.” —James Hansen, author of Storms of My Grandchildren and Former Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

“George Marshall is one of the most interesting, challenging and original thinkers on the psychology of our collective climate denial. If his advice were heeded, we might just have the courage to look unblinkingly at this existential crisis, and then to act.” —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

“Enlightening.” —Publishers Weekly

“A real soul searching challenge for us all. Marshall illuminates the path to embarking on a heroic quest for a just and equitable world. A sobering, yet hopeful book.” —Frank DiSalvo, Director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Cornell University

“In 42 engaging, bite-size chapters, Marshall presents the psychological research demonstrating why climate change simply doesn't feel dangerous enough to justify action and how we can trick our brains into changing our sense of urgency about the problem. His work is a much needed kick in the pants for policymakers, grassroots environmentalists, and the public to induce us to develop effective motivational tools to help us take action to face the reality of climate change before it's too late.” —Booklist

“Fantastic.” —Grist

“Essential reading for everyone interested in communicating the science of climate change and its urgent policy implications.” —Critical Angle

“This is not a book to read and put away—but one that merits returning to and engaging with intellectually. Is there a higher compliment that one can give an author?” —Daily Kos

“Absorbing, all-embracing, immensely readable.” —Climate News Network

From the Publisher

06/01/2015
Marshall endeavors to understand why skeptics fail to grasp the science of climate change. Examining psychological research, he argues that people are naturally inclined to protect their immediate economic interests over what they perceive to be a vague, long-term threat. By illustrating how the mind works, Marshall offers strategies that can be used to sway the opinions of climate change skeptics, especially those in the policymaking arena.

Library Journal

2014-06-15
Readers seeking information on global warming will not find much here, but they would do well to dig into this lively, nonpolemical account of why the average person pays so little attention.Veteran British environmental activist Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, travels the world interviewing climate change deniers as well as those working on the problem. His conclusions are unsettling, to say the least. Emotional stories always trump facts, and climate change lacks the inflammatory features of, say, abortion, atheism or gay marriage. Why has it provoked fierce opposition from a minority and indifference from the general public? Marshall lists three main reasons. 1) It lacks salience, or a demand for our immediate attention. In the Stone Age, threats were nearby and obvious. Our brains evolved to give high priority to proximity—a nuclear power plant, an abortion clinic—while distant threats are a hard sell. 2) It seems controversial to most observers even though (thanks to the media) one side may feature scientists and the other cranks. 3) It demands immediate sacrifices (lower living standards, tiresome regulations) to prevent a future disaster. President Barack Obama’s speeches on the subject, while admirable and necessary, never include practical steps. Reversing global warming requires government action, so U.S. opponents are overwhelmingly conservative. Yet exceptions exist. Responding to an electricity shortfall after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster, the Japanese voluntarily cut power use and sweltered without air conditioning. After 9/11, Americans yearned to make a personal contribution as they did in wartime. The author closes with “Some Personal and Highly Biased Ideas for Digging Our Way Out of This Hole.”An insightful, often discouraging look at why climate control advocates have failed to get their message across and what they should do. Much of Marshall’s advice is counterintuitive (e.g.,drop the apocalyptic rhetoric), but it rings true.

Kirkus Reviews

George Marshall is one of the most interesting, challenging and original thinkers on the psychology of our collective climate denial. If his advice were heeded, we might just have the courage to look unblinkingly at this existential crisis, and then to act.

author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Do Naomi Klein

Illuminating and important--makes clear why we continue down a dangerous path of increasing climate disruption, even when attractive, hospitable, alternative paths are available.

author of Storms of My Grandchildren and Former Di James Hansen

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