Why has the campaign to get the public on board with regard to climate change failed?
Per Espen Stoknes and eco-psychology
Well worth your time to listen to this.
http://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_Stoknes.mp3
Joining the inner and outer stuff, what we think and how we act manifests in the world around us, the ecology is being shaped by the way we think and act.
Are humans inevitably short term?
We don’t lack knowledge, so why don’t people act?
What are the conditions under which humans will come to act for the long term common good?
“For too long we’ve relied solely on a highly rational double push: More scientific facts will finally convince the wayward about climate change. And there must be a global price on carbon emissions. But neither is rooted in our messy, social reality or guided by how our brains actually think. Oddly enough, more facts and more taxes don’t build policy support among people.
It’s time for a different approach: Finding ways of engaging that go with the evolutionary flow of the human mind, rather than push against it. One starting point is to use the power of social networks. Most of us imitate others. If I believe everyone else is driving big cars and using more energy than me, then I’ll do the same—or more! Research has shown that if people believe their neighbors are conserving more energy and water than themselves, then they’ll start doing it, too—or more!”
Why does knowing more mean believing—and doing—less? A prescription for change
The more facts that pile up about global warming, the greater the resistance to them grows, making it harder to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead.
It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples—from the private sector to government agencies—Stoknes shows how to retell the story of climate change and, at the same time, create positive, meaningful actions that can be supported even by deniers.
Per Espen Stoknes, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming
Important book, very much in line with my thinking (I place more emphasis on ethics and constituting social relations and identities. I look at virtues, habits as qualities for successful ecological living rather than nudging. But this look at social psychology is all about reducing distance and dissonance and increasing responsibility as something felt).
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-04-13/what-we-think-about-when-we-try-not-to-think-about-global-warming
In What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, Stoknes not only masterfully identifies the five main psychological barriers to climate action, but addresses them with five strategies for how to talk about global warming in a way that creates action and solutions, not further inaction and despair.
These strategies work with, rather than against, human nature. They are social, positive, and simple—making climate-friendly behaviors easy and convenient. They are also story-based, to help add meaning and create community, and include the use of signals, or indicators, to gauge feedback and be constantly responsive.
Whether you are working on the front lines of the climate issue, immersed in the science, trying to make policy or educate the public, or just an average person trying to make sense of the cognitive dissonance or grapple with frustration over this looming issue, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming moves beyond the psychological barriers that block progress and opens new doorways to social and personal transformation.
- See more at: http://www.chelseagreen.com/what-we-think-about-when-we-try-not-to-think-about-global-warming#sthash.OZhdxTik.dpuf
Within the existing institutional framework, individual and sectional rationality and freedom is generating a collective irrationality and unfreedom.
We live in a world of supra-individual forces. These collective forces are the unintended consequences of our uncoordinated choices and actions. We need to devise appropriate collective mechanisms so as to be able bridge the gaps between knowledge, action, policy.
Per Espen Stoknes looks at the psychological mechanisms involved. This is key in breaking the institutional and psychological inertia that will seal the doom of our civilisation.
I also look at social identities and relations so that these collective forces that govern our lives are brought within our reach and control. Social proximity is key to assuming responsibility. Fear and guilt induce passivity when we need to stimulate engagement. Action wrote that power corrupts. I say lack of power corrupts most of all. We need to reclaim our physical, ethical and political commons through the restitution of power to its social and natural origins. We need constructive models of the future ecological society, attaching the end to the means of its realisation, and inaugurating transitions that draw increasing numbers in. I keep hearing that elections are won from the centre ground. That’s the problem, we lack a centre ground.
William Butler Yeats (THE SECOND COMING)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The precise social and institutional forms of that collective control
What works? Only connect (TS Eliot). Networking, applying social norms, increasing the intensity and improving the quality of reciprocal ties. Increasing the ability to identify AND eliminate free riders. Enough from me.
http://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_Stoknes.mp3
https://www.facebook.com/lachristamgreco/photos/a.567450859935430.142947.567257716621411/1151247684889075/?type=1&fref=nf