At a recent session with Auden Schendler at Hub Boulder the conversation rotated largely around how to convince the other half of our society of validity of the science behind Global Warming. First let me point out that "the other half", or "53% makers", or whatever one chooses to point to those other people that don't think like they do, is aligned along a political stratification that is totally invalid when it comes to practical things like environment, and economics, and values. Over the past year reports have emerged (Huffington Post Sep17,11; NYT Aug4,12) that show 70-80% of Americans believe the climate is warming and that this should be a national priority. We have a consistent over 50% Republicans in line as well. The only hold outs are largely Tea Partiers how trend Libertarian and although they subscribe to Ayn Randism economics (which maybe works well in a small population but is invalid economic theory with large crowded populations).. I think they missed some of the most basic philosophy of socio-economic structure namely -Tragedy of the Commons. But I digress. We believe the climate is changing, experience it every season now, and maybe even understand variability as we trend average warm (abnormal snows in the South but crazy hot summers). Their is no disagrement among scientists on this subject. Yet the media perpetuates in the face of the polls. (The Union of Concerned Scientists just released a report on media over the last six months - 95% of Fox News reporting was 'misleading' on climate science; 80% of the Wall Street Journal reporting on climate science is 'misleading' while the 20% of reporting that isn't misleading is primarily op-ed write-ins or rebuttals to released articles.
So, we believe in climate change. We are witnessing disruption to daily life on a regular basis these days. The "once in a lifetime storm" or "500 year flood" is becoming a more frequent occurrence, every few years now. And we surely can't cover our eyes from seeing glaciers disappear. So what are we actually talking about? Human induced climate change. That's the sticking point because if we are not responsible, and natural occurrences are, then why would we want to be concerned about green house gases? Well, this is a problem.
So what motivates people to believe, to change behavior? I argue that first we've got to be cognoscente of ones value system. When people experience things in their environment that connect with the values, we have cognition. Scientists and academics believe in data, studies, and well written journalism. So it's very natural to believe the results of 30 years of modeling the climate which is based on data, observations and deep reaches back in time through core samples. They get the complexity of it all and the prudence of science itself -to discover, not spout ideology. Yet many people don't live in this realm. If we look at two other value systems that define American's world view we see religion and also economics. Religious based value systems believe in age old testament and current community. Testament only gives us Revolutions as any future guide to humanity, definitely a problem. How this fictional story ended up in good book will be debated for eons. But closer to home is one's community and family, so when a religious values person experiences the pain of climate change upon their friends or family, they believe. Likewise with a person who's value system is founded in economics -show me the money rains supreme. They believe when they see the costs associated more deadly storms.
Behavior psychology informs us that we change when we feel the pain. We're seeing the results of this everyday through evolutions laid out in the previous paragraph. Learning theory also illuminates that we don't change instantaneously, that there are a serious of small changes in perception until the tipping point, where our views change permanently. The point is that we are seeing a migration in belief in climate change and we weren't there just a few short years ago, now we are. The next step we've all been working on is convincing the populace of human induced climate change. But this has also got to be rooted in value systems and everyone doesn't believe in the numbers.. because they probably don't really understand the numbers. I mean heck Fox News loves to use the term "calculus" when they are talking about simple addition and subtraction! One step at a time. We're largely there with climate change which gives us the opportunity to change behavior to conservation of depleting resources and prudent planning for risky events. We are largely there with economics and the understanding of job scarcity and prudent investment on our future (ok, not quite but we're on the way).
We are on the path forward with climate change even in all its struggles. Which means we're that much closer to the tipping point in the learned psychology of human induced climate change. But, academics, cease insisting on the "science", we know we are under change. Science doesn't have the appropriate language for sound bites and definitely can't project undeniably what will happen... nor what happened to end the last ice age only 11,000 years ago (when man kind spawned civilization). Let's focus on the undeniable observations like the rise in CO2 during the industrial revolution, and the direct correlation to environmental devastation along the way. Habitat! Let's focus on devastation of super storms to commerce and productivity. Costs! And let's illuminate the changing landscape and widespread release of CH4. GHG! If we only say 'what if it is us?'; 'what if it isn't us?' Are you really going to do nothing as our world changes way too rapidly?
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