Book Summary of "What we think about when we try not to think about global warming" by Per Espen Stocknes

1. Book Summary
Duncan Noble
July 2016

2. Book Summary
2
 The Climate Paradox: Knowing more; Doing less
 Thinking: The 5 Psychological Barriers to Climate
Action
 Doing: If it Doesn’t Work, Do Something Else
 Being: Towards a New Way of Being
 Summing Up
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming

3. The Climate Paradox
3 What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
 We know that climate
science facts are getting
more solidly documented
and disturbing year by
year
 We also know that most
people either don’t believe
in or do not act upon those
facts
 The greatest science
communication failure in
history: The more facts,
the less concern

4. 5 Psychological Barriers to Climate Action
4 What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming

5. Distance
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To Think About Global Warming
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 The climate issue remains remote for the majority of
us
 We can’t see climate change
 Melting glaciers are usually far away, as are the
spots on earth now experiencing sea level rise, more
severe floods, droughts, fires, and other climate
disruptions
 It may hit foreign others, not me or my kin
 The heaviest impacts are far off in time – in the
coming century or farther
 Despite some people stating that global warming is
here now, it still feels distant from everyday
concerns.

6. What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
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Image: Wikimedia

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To Think About Global Warming
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 When climate change is framed as an
encroaching disaster that can only be addressed
by loss, cost, and sacrifice, it creates a wish to
avoid the topic
 We’re predictably averse to losses
 With a lack of practical solutions, helplessness
grows and the fear message backfires
 We’ve heard that “the end is nigh” so many
Doom
Image: Brownsburg Public Library

8. Dissonance
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To Think About Global Warming
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 If what we know (e.g., our fossil energy use
contributes to global warming), conflicts with what
we do (drive, fly, eat beef, or heat with fossil fuels),
then dissonance sets in
 The same happens if my attitudes conflict with those
of people important to me
 In both cases, the lack of convenient behaviors and
social support weaken climate attitudes over time
 But by doubting or downplaying what we know (the
facts), we can feel better about how we live
 Thus, actual behavior and social relations determine
attitudes in the long run

9. Denial
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
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 When we negate, ignore, or otherwise avoid
acknowledging the unsettling facts about climate
change, we find refuge from fear and guilt
 By joining outspoken denialism and mockery, we can
get back at those whom we feel criticize our
lifestyles, think they know better, and try to tell us
how to live
 Denial is based in self-defence, not ignorance,
intelligence, or lack of information
 Example: Read the comments section of any article
about climate change

10. iDentity
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To Think About Global Warming
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 We filter news through our professional and cultural
identity
 We look for information that confirms our existing
values and notions, and filter away what challenges
them
 If people who hold conservative values, for instance,
hear from a liberal that the climate is changing, they
are less likely to believe the message
 Cultural identity overrides the facts
 If new information requires us to change our selves,
then the information is likely to lose
 We experience resistance to calls for change in self-
identity

11. Overcoming Barriers to Climate Action
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To Think About Global Warming

12. Principles for New Climate Strategies
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Upending the Barriers
 Make the issue feel near, human, personal, and urgent
 Use supportive framings that do not backfire by creating
negative feelings
 Reduce dissonance by providing opportunities for
consistent and visible action.
 Avoid triggering the emotional need for denial through
fear, guilt, self-protection
 Reduce cultural and political polarization on the issue
 Sticking to Positive Strategies
 Acting as Social Citizens

13. Crafting Climate Messages that Work
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1. Harness The Power of Social Networks
2. Reframe Climate Messages
3. Make it Simple to Choose Right (Nudges)
4. Use the Power of Stories to Re-Story Climate
5. Create New Signals of Progress
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming

14. Use the Power of Social Networks
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Use social norms to motivate others
 Reduce power and water consumption
 Spread social norms through green products and services (rooftop
solar, eco-apps)
 Improve recycling efforts
 Use groups and word of mouth from trusted peer
messengers
 Clarify the scientific consensus
 Join Earth Hour and similar initiatives
 Set up home parties; solar panel buying clubs; local-patriotism
climate conversations
 Introduce the topic of climate in existing networks (churches,
clubs, sports, and the like)
 Join Carbon Conversations and Transition Town efforts
 Set up funding for social network climate initiatives.

15. 15

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To Think About Global Warming
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17. Use Positive Climate Framing
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 Insurance against risk
 Health and well-being
 Preparedness and resilience
 Values and a common cause
 Opportunities for innovation and job growth

18. What We Think About
When We Try Not To
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19. Make the Low Carbon Choice Simple
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Use Green Nudges to Make It Simpler to Act
 Make life-cycle costs salient on all appliance price tags
 Make smaller plates in restaurant buffets the default
 Make non-meat special dishes a restaurant’s default
 Make double-sided printing the default
 Include voluntary CO2 price fees in plane tickets as the
default
 Increase the frequency and speed of buses and biking
while reducing car parking and access to city centers
 Bundle home re-insulation with attic cleaning and
renovation
 Make recycling fun with painted green steps, big-belly
bins, and the like
 Host local free pizza parties as a reward for community
energy conservation

20. The Most Famous Nudge?
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To Think About Global Warming
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21. Individual Actions and Systemic Change
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Like all simple and painless behavioral changes, the
value of simple behavior changes like reusing
shopping bags hangs on whether they can act as a
catalyst for other, more impactful activities – such as
truly green purchases and more vocal support for
greener policies.
 Individual solutions are insufficient or even
counterproductive unless they contribute to structural
changes, too.

22. Use the Power of Better Climate Stories
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 Avoid apocalypse narratives, and instead tell stories
about:
 Green growth
 Happiness and the good life
 Stewardship and ethics
 Re-wilding and ecological restoration
 When telling stories, make them:
 Personal and concrete
 Vivid and extraordinary
 Visual: “Show, don’t Tell”
 Humorous and witty, with strong plot and drama
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming

23. Better Climate Stories
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"We [should] tell new
stories of the dream,
not the nightmares.
We must describe
where we want to go,
such as happier lives,
and better cities.”
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
Image: The Boy Who Harnessed
the Wind: Creating Currents of
Electricity and Hope

24. Better Climate Stories
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To Think About Global Warming
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25. New Signals/Indicators of Progress
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To Think About Global Warming
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To support new stories, we need new indicators to see
and give feedback on progress:
 Greenhouse emissions per value added (green
growth story)
 Happiness, well-being, and integrated wealth (vision
story)
 Kantian ethics planetary boundaries (ethical story)
 Ecosystem health and nature index (re-wilding story)

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To Think About Global Warming
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27. Towards a New Way of Being
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To Think About Global Warming
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28. Embracing Your Depression
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
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It is the destruction of the world
in our own lives that drives us
half insane, and more than half.
To destroy that which we were given
in trust: how will we bear it? . . .
To have lost, wantonly,
the ancient forests, the vast grasslands
is our madness, the presence
in our very bodies of our grief.
Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

29. Climate Disruption as Symptom: What Is It
Trying to Tell Us?
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
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 A Symptom Is Not Just a Problem to Be Fixed
 It can also have a deeper symbolic meaning
 What Climate Symptoms Say About Our Worldview
 Humans vs. Nature/Environment
 Humans fully Immersed in Nature
 What Climate Symptoms Say About Our Values
 Values explain What we care about and Why
 We all have Egoistic, Altruistic and Biospheric Values in
difference mixes
 Understanding the Limitations of Science and
Psychology
 Moving from the mirror to the window

30. Re-Imagining Climate as the Living Air
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To Think About Global Warming
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 The Air’s Poiesis: It Is
Actively Bringing-into-
Being
 Poiesis: Knowing by
Creating
 Air and Psyche: We’re
Inside Air’s Awareness
 Historic Roots to a Sense
of the Living Air
 Indigenous Traditions and
the Holy Wind
 Reframing air as
something enchanted,
beautiful, and sacred

31. Rewilding of Ecosystems and Humans
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming
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32. Towards a New Way of Being
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To Think About Global Warming
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 There are too many good reasons why we humans resist
the many sad facts of climate disruption, the "global
weirding." It finally boils down to the question Why
bother? That one question reveals a simple fact: The
most fundamental obstacles to averting dangerous
climate disruption are not mainly physical or
technological or even institutional – they have to do with
how we align our thinking and doing with our being. This
missing alignment shows clearly in the current lack of
courage, determination, and imagination to carry through
the necessary actions to combat climate disruption. But
these human capacities are, luckily, as renewable as the
wind and the sunshine. Humans will act for the long-term
when conducive conditions are in place.
 Therefore, all climate communicators need to assist
building the necessary social norms, supportive frames,
simple actions, new stories, and better signals.

33. It’s Hopeless and I’ll Give It My All
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Varieties of Hope
 Passive Optimism: things will turn out well
 Active Optimism: Heroic – Yes we can! Just do it!
 Beyond Optimism and Pessimism
 The Revitalization of Citizen Community
 Expanding Our Sense of Self and the Reversal of
Agency
 Flowing with the Winds of Change

34. Chris Hedges on Revolution
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To Think About Global Warming
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I do not know if we can build a better society. I do not even know
if we will survive as a species. But I do know that these
corporate forces have us by the throat. And they have my
children by the throat. I do not fight fascists because I will win. I
fight fascists because they are fascists. And this is a fight that in
the face of the overwhelming forces against us requires that we
follow those possessed by sublime madness, that we become
stone catchers and find in acts of rebellion the sparks of life, an
intrinsic meaning that lies outside the possibility of success. We
must grasp the harshness of reality at the same time as we
refuse to allow this reality to paralyze us. People of all creeds
and people of no creeds must make an absurd leap of faith to
believe, despite all the empirical evidence around us, that the
good draws to it the good. The fight for life goes somewhere —
the Buddhists call it karma — and in these acts we make
possible a better world, even if we cannot see one emerging
around us.
Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion

35. Summing Up
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 Grounded in the way that people actually think and
behave
 Makes a lot of sense
 Final section on “Being” is perhaps the most
challenging, and the most important
 Much talk about climate assumes myth of “information
deficit”
 Provides insights to allow you to be more empathetic
towards climate science denial
 Some good advice on crafting climate messages that
might actually get through
 Provides hope that we can design climate messages
that make a difference
What We Think About When We Try Not
To Think About Global Warming

36. Contact Information
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To Think About Global Warming
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 Duncan Noble
 d.noble@outlook.com
 about.me/canoedunk
 www.duncannoble.com
 Twitter: @carbonexplorer