I’ve never met a climate skeptic (or anyone else) who wasn’t pro-environment but that doesn’t mean they have to be misanthropic nitwits like professional environmentalists
Climate change might eventually cause millions of deaths and all kinds of natural disasters. But don’t tell that to a climate-change sceptic if you want them to do anything about it.
Instead, focus on how mitigation efforts can help people become more warm and caring towards others or how it can promote economic and technological development. That’s the advice psychologists give after confirming the strategy in an experiment.
“I got the idea from mediation. When people have disputes there’s not much point convincing one party that they’re wrong,” says study leader Paul Bain, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Bain and colleagues first took 155 climate-change sceptics and asked them how their country – Australia – would be different in 2050 if action were taken now to mitigate climate change, and how likely they would be to engage in pro-environmental activity.
Those sceptics who thought action on climate change would make people more warm and considerate, or would promote technological or political development, were more likely to have pro-environmental intentions, such as voting for green candidates or signing petitions supporting action.
One participant wrote that “if we took action it would show we do care for the environment and therefore care for the human race”.
Bain then went on to test whether telling sceptics about these “co-benefits” of climate change could affect their intentions more than telling them about the harms of inaction.
He found it did. Participants who were told about climate action’s effects on interpersonal warmth or societal development were more likely to report pro-environmental intentions than those told about the health risks of climate inaction.
“Climate change might eventually cause millions of deaths and all kinds of natural disasters.”
No it won’t. Show me one death certificate that lists cause of death as climate change.
If the climate changes we are all going to die. So it’s easy to make those predictions. Never mind we are all going to die if the climate remains static.
Exactly. The WHO says that about 60 million people die every year worldwide from all causes, thats just an average. But the annual variation can be tens of millions. A million dead can easily be buried in that annual variability, and can easily be attributed to anthropogenic climate change. The media would lap it up like thirsty dogs.
Idiots like these folks really frost me. I’m willing to bet less than one in one hundred have done anything other than sort trash for recycling and buy organic foods, yet they are environmental experts. In the 50′s my father would supply me as labor to plant windbrakes and water conservation measure for farmers who “didn’t have the time.” I’ve got about 40 years of inventing, developing, operating managing systems that reduce or eliminate pollution. I’ve turned one environmental bad boy into a show place. I’ve done environmental permitting and compliance for over 30 years. I haven’t seen many so-called environmentalists who have done more than a couple feel-good Saturday projects. If you were to call me an “environmentalist” I’d consider it a grievous insult.
Mediation techniques to turn me from being “anti-environment.” Phooey.
I used to call myself an environmnetalist, I don’t call myself that anymore. However I continue to recycle, buy a smaller car, I don’t litter the streets, I turn the light off when leaving a room. And I am against any organization which pollutes my air, land and water. But I am not environmentalist.
I will never get in bed with the greenie lunatics who want carbon trading, wind turbines, solar panels, land grabs and world governments, all in the name of saving the planet. They are the environmentalists.
Bob has the right idea. The only effective way we can ‘help’ the environment is to turn wilderness into managed gardens, applying locally appropriate measures, selected for the conditions in one particular spot, to minimize losses of valuable resources (potable water, topsoil, agricultural minerals, etc.) and maximize the products of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Realistically, we must face the fact that we humans are omnivores, climax predators, and stewards of our own castles, and eventually the survival of all life forms on this planet will depend on their ability to adapt to coexisting with us.
“The only effective way we can ‘help’ the environment is to turn wilderness into managed gardens”
Yeah right, because the Forest Service has done such a great job preventing wild fires and beetle infestations. I don’t want you or anyone pretending we can manage Nature. It’s bad enough dealing with a bunch of whack-job eco-fascists. We don’t need to deal with a bunch of brain-dead climate engineers too.
Paul Bain, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Psychology = the field of post-normal science that teaches, “The Art of Selling Those Used Car Clunkers”
This technique will work right up to the point that people find out the promised benefits don’t appear. The reason the health benefits failed is there’s no evidence. When people figure out caring about the environment does not make people warm and fuzzy, that will die out too.
I use the term “conservationist” to describe myself. I believe in doing things that benefit the environment while realizing the planet never was a static thing and everything we do will change something. I am not an environmentalists as I am not trying to prevent change and impact, but rather to accept and manage it.