It’s not often that an article about climate change becomes one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet — especially in the midst of a controversial G20 summit.

But that exact thing happened following the publication of a lengthy essay in New York Magazine titled “The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, Economic Collapse, a Sun that Cooks Us: What Climate Change Could Wreak — Sooner Than You Think.”

In the course of 7,200 words, author David Wallace-Wells chronicled the possible impacts of catastrophic climate change if current emissions trends are maintained, including, but certainly not limited to: mass permafrost melt and methane leaks, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and food insecurity, diseases and viruses, “rolling death smog,” global conflict and war, economic collapse and ocean acidification.

Slate political writer Jamelle Bouie described the essay on Twitter as “something that will haunt your nightmares.”

It’s a fair assessment. Reading it feels like a series of punches in the gut, triggering emotions like despair, hopelessness and resignation.

But here’s the thing: many climate psychologists and communicators consider those feelings to be the very opposite of what will compel people to action.

“Based on my research on climate communications, this article is exactly what we don’t need,” says Per Espen Stoknes, Norwegian psychologist and author of What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“It only serves to further alarm the already alarmed segment of people. ”

Climate Psychologists Recommends ‘Positivity Ratio’ of 3:1

Let’s get one thing out of the way.

Critics of the New York Magazine article — and other instances of doomsday journalism — are not anti-science. These are all people who firmly recognize the severity of catastrophic climate change, and are certainly not petitioning for a bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach, shielding the public from the potential horrors.

Rather, they suggest that most people will only process such facts about climate change if it’s framed in an appropriate way that acknowledges how individuals and societies respond to potentially traumatic threats.

“It’s really important to understand that it’s not just about facts and numbers, but having a way for people to interpret them and know there’s something they can do,” says Kari Marie Norgaard, associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon and author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

Stoknes notes there’s a well-known “positivity ratio” for optimal engagement of a 3:1 ratio of opportunities to threats. He says the New York Magazine piece was around nine threats to every one proposed solution.

In other words, a tripling of the ratio in the wrong direction.

Article Sticks to Hard Science, Ignoring Role of Social Sciences

The author of the New York Magazine article has already responded to a series of criticisms on Twitter, including on the scientific merit of some of his claims.

A rather revealing moment was when Wallace-Wells replied to a critique from renowned futurist Alex Steffen — who had described the article as “one long council of despair” — by suggesting that “my own feeling is that ignorance about what’s at stake is a much bigger problem.”

The clear implication is that Wallace-Wells assumes a confronting of ignorance about scientific facts could help compel people to action and avoid the most dangerous manifestations of climate change.

But Daniel Aldana Cohen — assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the response piece in Jacobin titled “New York Mag’s Climate Disaster Porn Gets It Painfully Wrong” — suggests in an interview with DeSmog Canada that Wallace-Well’s approach indicates a failure to engage with any questions about broader sociopolitical systems.

“I think in the politics of climate change, a narrow idea of climate science is fetishized,” says Cohen, adding that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change largely fails to include social sciences in working group reports.

“It feels like the most realistic, the most unvarnished truth is what the science predicts,” he continues. “But the thing is that in some way, climate science registers the impact of human activity, but it’s not actually an integrated account of the dynamic feedback between social and political activities and physical events in the atmosphere.”

In other words, Wallace-Wells’ article sketches out a narrative of catastrophic climate change that assumes people don’t act on the knowledge of the situation.

But in a cruel twist, by only focusing on the science without any attempt to contextualize it in society or political systems, it could well have the reverse effect by making readers feel even more powerless.

This isn’t a new problem: Stoknes notes that as identified by James Painter of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, about 80 per cent of media coverage on the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report used “catastrophe framing,” with less than 10 per cent using “opportunity framing.”

“It’s not just about pointing your fingers at the climate skeptics and saying that’s the problem,” Norgaard says.

“Of course, it’s a major problem. But the apathy or acquiescence of the majority of people who are aware and do care is a larger problem. It’s about how we mobilize those people.”

If Framed Correctly, Idea of Apocalypse Can Help People Imagine Alternatives

Stoknes argues that thinking about such a sobering subject as apocalypse or death, if done correctly, can actually help people conceptualize new ways of thinking and being.

“This psychological approach to the apocalypse is very important, and I found it completely absent in the article,” he says. “It is not about predicting a certain year in the future of linear time, when everything will be collapsing. Maybe this notion is more like a call in the here and now, calling attention to the urgent need for a deep rethink of where we are and letting go of some cherished Western notions that we’ve been stuck in over the last century.”

Such a sentiment is echoed by climate psychologist Renee Lertzman and author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement, who emphasizes in an interview with DeSmog Canada that predictable fault lines have formed in the wake of the New York Magazine piece.

A key factor for her is how humans actually process information that may be challenging and bring up difficult feelings. She says the consensus is that we can become “cognitively impaired” when the brain’s limbic system becomes activated, resulting in reduced capacity to have functions for strategy, foresight, collaboration and tolerance.

“That goes out the window when your limbic system is activated, which arguably articles like this are going to do,” she says. “The best way to deal with that reality is to address how we can soothe and disarm our defences.”

‘We Need to Also Be Engaged in Collective Political Action and Solutions’

That’s certainly not going to be an easy feat. But there are plenty of initiatives out there that are embracing a bit more nuance.

Lertzman points to Project Drawdown — an attempt to compile the 100 top solutions to climate change — as a powerful initiative, although she suggests “even that is missing the emotional taking stock of where we are.” Cohen shouted out the work of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

But central to progressing beyond the gridlock of current climate discourse is likely via bringing it closer to the local level, where people feel they can actually influence things.

CBC’s new podcast 2050: Degrees of Change is a good example of this. While it paints a dramatic picture of life in B.C. under climate change, it also uses a scenario under which the world has drastically decreased greenhouse gas emissions.

“We wanted listeners to end off realizing this is a middle of the road scenario and things could be worse and they could be better depending on what we choose to do now,” Johanna Wagstaffe, podcast host and CBC senior meteorologist, told DeSmog Canada.

Norgaard says engaging with issues on a local level can give people a leverage point into even greater engagement.

“We really need to on the one hand be aware that it’s something we need to respond to as a collective,” she says. “Riding your bike is great, but we need to also be engaged in collective political action and solutions. That’s part of what helps people to do something proactive that’s real.”

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Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to participate in discussions about climate change threats and environmental issues with people across private, public, governmental, and research sectors. Whether at an island retreat in Puget Sound, a corporate conference at a resort or in the halls of our esteemed universities, the same questions get asked: How can we get people to care more? How do we motivate people? What’s it going to take?

What if these are the wrong questions to be asking?

Let’s consider this question by first reconsidering the context.

Environmental issues can generate huge anxieties that make them hard for many people to contemplate. Climate change in particular taps into all sorts of cognitive dissonances and feelings of guilt, leaving many people feeling overwhelmed about their role in the problem and solution. This anxiety is often managed through an array of brilliant (usually unconscious) strategies, often both privately and socially, that help us avoid pain, discomfort and conflicts.

Assuming we can agree on these things, the questions we should be asking are: How can our well-established insights into loss and cognitive dissonance guide new approaches to reaching people? How can our understanding of the way anxiety impacts our psyche and conduct inform the way we engage, message and campaign for a more sustainable future?

Psychology and sustainability may seem like strange bedfellows but more than 100 years of psychoanalytic research reveals a lot about how people use unconscious processes to manage anxiety. If I am feeling rather down about the prognosis of our planet, I like to ask myself: “What would a good therapist do?” Does a therapist berate the patient for being scared, reticent or a bit stuck? Does a therapist offer cash incentives for changing behaviors? (I hope not.) One of the first things a (good) therapist does is create what’s called a sense of safety and containment. They can do this by acknowledging their patient’s conflict, suffering and struggle, by helping the patient feel “seen”. Then – and only then – do they form an alliance with the patient to work together in a collaborative, participatory way towards change.

How this translates into engaging people more widely and creatively can be surprising. For starters, acknowledging that people use unconscious strategies for managing anxiety changes the ways we consider (and research) how people think and feel about our world. Analysis needs to go beneath the surface to explore where people feel stuck in conflict and anxious. Second, a psychoanalytic paradigm asks not whether people care or not but focuses onwhere care may exist but may not have permission to be expressed.

This approach can infuse our engagement work, whether in research or strategy, with a mood of curiosity as opposed to frustration and irritation at how wasteful, greedy and short-sighted societies can be. And this mood of curiosity and inquiry can lead us into some unexpected behavior change strategies – particularly through conversation.

The power of conversation may be the most profound insight we can gain from those on the frontlines of the therapeutic professions. Conversation changes people. As Rosemary Randall’s development of Carbon Conversations demonstrates, it’s very simple – if we want people to change, we have to listen to them. Humans are designed to learn, be changed and process information in the act of conversing. In this context, engagement can move beyond the creation of “Green Teams” and champions, into a far more dynamic evolution that creates contexts for creative participation. This means letting go of some control and being open to seeing what emerges when we invite people to contribute (a concept usefully offered by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott) and exercise their agency.

What all of this amounts to is a radical reframe, a shift from a focus on motivating, persuading, cajoling and gamifying to inviting, enabling, facilitating and supporting. This is about giving people permission to care. As deeply social beings, we need some permission, we need to feel safe. Now, more than any other time, we need to start practicing a new form of engagement that presumes there is more care than can be contained – it just needs some help being channeled.

This article originally appeared on Climate Access.

Image Credit: Mark Stevens via Flickr

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Imagine coming across a piece of reliable information that contradicts everything you’ve ever believed about, say, global warming or the war on terror. It would likely prompt the question: if you were wrong about such an important issue, what else could you be wrong about? What’s more, if you’ve been wrong about a bunch of things, then perhaps you’re not quite as well-informed as you had previously believed.

Thoughts like these are jarring ones because they threaten our sense of self — making us feel stupid, empty, even worthless. Unsurprisingly then, most people’s willingness to open up to new information depends largely on how this information will challenge or coincide with their preconceived notions of what is good or bad, right or wrong, true or false.

According to a study by researchers at the University of Waterloo, called Self-Affirmation and Sensitivity to Argument Strength, when people are presented with corrective information that runs counter to their ideology, those who most strongly identify with the ideology will intensify their incorrect beliefs. And as such, the greater the challenge new information poses to a person’s self-worth, the less likely it is to have any impact at all on them.

If there’s something positive to draw from these uncomfortable realizations of our purposeful ignorance, it’s that if we take the time to better understand why and how people think and feel the way they do, these inherent biases can be successfully mitigated and controlled.

And with this aim in mind, what follows — keeping in mind that I have likely succumb to a few of these during the writing of this piece, as you will during the process of reading it — are eight of the most commonplace logical fallacies that misinform our minds every day.

1. Backfire effect: As mentioned above, the more a piece of information lowers self-worth, the more likely it is to be rejected outright. Therefore, new information can create such ideological insecurity that people will manufacture counterarguments to the point that they overcompensate and become more convinced of their original views. Hence, instead of convincing someone to question an invalidated belief, fresh information can actually ‘backfire’ by strengthening the grasp a refuted opinion has on an individual.

Monkey see, monkey do. Image Credit: danmachold/Flickr

2. Status quo bias: We tend to be apprehensive of change, and this often leads us to make choices motivated by the desire to keep things as familiar as possible. This is because for most people the current baseline is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Needless to say, preference for the status quo represents a core component of conservative ideology – militarism, austerity and environmental exploitation are all-too-familiar attempts to hold on to the status quo.

3. Confirmation fallacy: We love to agree with those who agree with us. We visit websites that re-express our political opinions, re-read literature that reaffirms our cultural upbringings, befriend people with likeminded attitudes and form cohesive social circles based around similar key viewpoints. At the same time, we practice a reactive reasoning in that we undervalue, scrutinise and dismiss arguments, figures, and people that challenge our entrenched worldviews — after all, we are our own biggest censors.

4. In-group fallacy: Similar to the confirmation fallacy, due to our innate desire to be socially accepted, we tend to favour the thoughts, ideals and sentiments of those with whom we racially and culturally identify with most. And conversely, this means we are suspicious, fearful and ignorant of the preferences, wants, needs and values of groups and peoples that we have difficulty identifying with — this goes a long way toward explaining why racism remains so rampant in liberal-democratic countries.

5. False consensus bias: As we cannot really experience anything outside of our own consciousness, we tend to believe most people think like we do. In group settings, false consensus biases cause us to accept that the opinions, preferences and values of our own group reflect the larger population. And since groups tend to reach a consensus and avoid those who dispute it, they believe everyone thinks that way. This is the sort of groupthink that convinces political extremists they have widespread support.

Put a stop to groupthink by jumping off the bandwagon. Image Credit: caffeina/Flickr

6. Bandwagon Effect: Opinions and viewpoints spread infectiously among people, meaning we are very likely to adopt a belief merely because lots of other people believe it too. In other words, people are both socially insecure and cognitively lazy. We don’t want to think for ourselves, and we often assume that if someone else has already adopted something, it can’t be bad. Even though the popularity of an argument has little bearing on its validity, we disregard our own judgements in an attempt to assimilate.

7. Current moment fallacy: A cognitive tragedy of the commons, we have a hard time imagining ourselves in the future and altering our behaviours accordingly. As such, most opt for gratification now, saving discomfort for later. This lack of self-control, where most people would rather exchange serious troubles in the not-to-distant future for more trivial pleasures in the moment, personifies the impulsive decision-making that is responsible for the financial meltdown, political corruption and developments that harm the environment.

8. Blind Spot Bias: Ironically enough, if you read this article thinking that these biases don’t apply to you, you might suffer from this logically fallacy, which makes us think that while biases may apply to others, we are immune to them. This is because when we assess ourselves for irrationality, we look inward, searching through our thoughts and feelings for bias. But biases operate unconsciously, so while we have little trouble pointing out the biases in others, it is exceedingly difficult for us to take note of our own.

But why go through all this trouble to point out the logical fallacies that seem to be driving ignorance and close-mindedness in our society? Well, the political implications of this sort of self-reflexive psychoanalytic exercise should be pretty obvious…

In the past year alone, Canadians have borne witness to half a dozen Senate corruption scandals, a spying agency that’s quietly collecting and sharing our personal information, the actual destruction of priceless scientific archives and a relentless war on science and knowledge — all of which serve to demonstrate just how ideological our government has become.

So as we inch closer to the 2015 federal election, it is our responsibility as democratic citizens to take note of the ways these logical fallacies — and the dozens of others we succumb to — can misinform our minds, and those of our political leaders, each and everyday. For if we work at becoming a more cognizant and well-informed citizenry it will spill over into the polling station, and with any luck, onto Parliament Hill as well.

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Recent Environment Canada reports show that the Harper administration does not have the policies in place necessary to meet Canada’s existing environmental commitments, which have already been criticised as being the feeblest in the industrialised world. For instance, Canada was the only country to weaken its climate target under the Copenhagen Accord, and has since become the only country to formally withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. 

“At a time when institutions such as the World Bank and the International Energy Agency are calling for more climate action it is disappointing to have so many countries still being reluctant to move forward,” said Wendel Trio, Director of the European-based Climate Action Network and lead investigator for the 2013 Climate Change Performance Index, “Canada is a strong example of this lack of willingness to improve climate policies.”

“Canada has become the poster child for climate inaction, which represents a really long fall from where we were less than a decade ago,” added Patrick Bonin, Lead Climate-Energy and Arctic Campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “It has been hard to watch the unraveling of a rational and reasonable approach to science, while at the same time seeing more devastating extreme weather impacts all around us, it just makes you wonder what it is going to take for this government to get it.”

“The world has had enough of Canada’s inaction on climate change," concluded Steven Guilbeault, Co-Founder and Senior Director of the Montreal-based NGO Equiterre, “It is clear that this government’s reckless fixation on the tar sands is going to cost us not only a safe and healthy future and economy for our children, but also our international credibility.”

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