Dear friends,
I have loaded up on youtube a presentation called ‘The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing in Climate Change’. It contains a lot of my ideas and material on the psychology of climate change denial and climate communications and comes in three instalments.
Part one
Risk – and why we don’t feel threatened by climate change
Belief – why we can’t just accept the information and need to believe in it
Attention – how avoiding talking about climate change is like avoiding talking about human rights atrocities
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOsl5-AUTv4
Part two –
Stories – the way we mediate information about climate change. The problem with polar bears and why human rights organisations are more interested in ice cream than climate change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb5Zu_YGxjw&feature=related
Part three
Distancing – the strategies we adopt to keep the information at arm’s length
Compartmentalising – how we can accept climate change and continue polluting behaviour
Positive Framing – how we seek to turn climate change into a personal advantage
Ethical Offsets – how we adopt the easiest behaviours as proof of our virtue
Cynicism- the commercial appropriation of climate change images
What happens next? - surprisingly - what happens next
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da1zW3dG_ko
OK- it is hardly Inconvenient Truth or Story of Stuff. It was a lecture I gave last year at a climate psychology conference at the University of the West of England and I didn’t really twig that it was being taped or I would have worn a better jumper and not slouched about so much- but it was a nice lively audience and I got enough time to cover the ground well. All in all I am pleased with it and I think it is an entertaining introduction to the topic.
I really hope you do to.
Please share it with anyone who might like it and embed it anywhere you want
George Marshall,
Director of Projects,
Climate Outreach Information Network
Direct Telephone (Wales) 01686 411 080
Mobile 0781 724 1889
Skype: climategeorge
Main COIN Office
01865 403 334
The Climate Outreach and Information Network is a charitable trust formed in 2004 to directly engage the public about climate change, COIN inspires lasting changes in attitudes and behaviours through the use of innovative action learning methods and by assisting people to communicate their own messages to their peers. Charity registration number 1123315