How to Talk to Climate Change Deniers (Hint: Preaching Only Works on the Choir)

This morning I came across this infographic, which purports to be able to “make you win any climate argument.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got no bones with the data. Nor do I have any bones with the data presented, by Cody Beck on Grist, in a long series entitled “How to Talk to Climate Skeptics.”

I have bones with the method. Effective communication is important to me. I’ve never found data (no matter how overwhelming) to be a very effective tool when talking to climate skeptics. Have you? When’s the last time someone changed their mind because you shouted facts at them? The best people to shout facts at are the people you already agree with. Let off your steam with them. When “Talking to Climate Skeptics” we need a totally different approach.

Why? Well, for one thing, those “my facts will beat your facts!” debates are usually about power, and power struggles, while they may be fun sometimes, are counterproductive. They are about winning, not changing.

Second, as much as we’d like to believe that we live in a rational society, people are rarely convinced to change their position because of data that controverts it. When it comes to climate change, we need to STOP engaging the “is it or isn’t it happening” question. That’s been settled, and lending it legitimacy by addressing it (and allowing people to argue using the points they’ve been handed) is not going to help. So I’m disheartened that many dedicated environmentalists are still focusing on countering the disinformation campaign. That’s playing right into the Koch Brothers‘ hands, folks. As long as we’re still arguing about whether it’s happening, we’re not moving forward.

So–what do we say, then, when we mention climate change and Grandpa gets furious about wind turbines and Uncle B laughs it off? Believe me, I get upset in these situations, too. This shit matters to me extraordinarily. I’m not going to let it slide. But pulling out the dossier of graphs just makes people angrier. No one likes to feel talked down to. When you rattle off statistics, the walls get fortified and you get nowhere. And we DESPERATELY need to get somewhere, which is why you should put that dossier away. Stop thinking about proving that you’re right and start thinking about engaging people in productive conversation.

Look for a minute at the gay marriage debate. Americans have swung, since just 2008, from majority disapproval of gay marriage to majority approval. What changed people’s minds? Not studies about the efficacy of gay parenting, but knowing people who were gay–i.e., emotional, personal appeal. And amen to that–it’s a really hopeful example of positive social change. Turnarounds are possible even in our stagnant big-media culture. Climate change is not 100% analogous to gay rights, but environmentalists could learn a lot from recent LGBTQ methodology. To get turnarounds we need honest, personal, emotional engagement. That means we need to seek out avenues of approach where the walls aren’t already built. A lot of people are openminded on the road less traveled.

I have a number of climate change deniers in my family and in my rural hometown. When they make dismissive comments about climate change, I keep calm and take a tack they don’t expect. The following is (paraphrased, of course) my go-to response:

“Well, we disagree on that, but think about this: the changes we [would] need to make to address climate change [if it were happening] are GOOD CHANGES that will make everyone’s lives better. More efficient cars and better public transit (=less money spent on gas)? No more blowing up mountains for coal? No more reliance for our energy needs on violence and vacillating international oil prices? Less expensive and unnecessary waste from our newly-retrofitted houses and appliances? Producing 100% of our energy domestically without extraction? Perennial crops (a personal favorite of mine)? These are fundamentally good changes that will make our future better regardless of climate effects.”

I’ve yet to meet one denier who argued with these points–because there aren’t ready-made responses for them, and because he didn’t feel like I was attacking him!

Sometimes it’s enough to leave it there–the seed’s been planted; the positive rhetoric of SOLUTIONS has been introduced. At other times, addressing the issue in this unexpected way brings down the fences a little bit and moves us into more personal discussions about our visions (often more compatible than you’d think) for the future.

This, I believe, is ultimately a more fruitful way to go. And I really mean fruitful, as in, more likely to concretely move us forward on this issue. Swords into plowshares, and all.

Grandpa hasn’t come around on wind power, but these days he and I have damn good talks about energy policy and he thinks geothermal is pretty neat. I don’t really know where Uncle B stands on climate change these days, but now he wants to homestead and sell his citrus at farmers’ markets and put solar panels on his roof.

This is a call to action, folks. Let’s start a better conversation.

Get Off the Computer Right Now and Go Outside If…

…you are edgy, stressed, irritable, overwhelmed, on tenterhooks, depressed, or feel, in Bilbo’s words, like butter scraped over too much bread. Go outside. Take a walk in the park. Or hike up a mountain. Or just look closely at the weeds and bugs in your neighbor’s front yard. Do not get into your car. Do not bring your iPhone.

[Aside: One of the saddest sights I ever saw was, unfortunately, a dad hiking in the Adirondacks with his two teenage boys. It was a weekend evening in October and the woods were stunning, just golden. The boys were jumping from stone to stone across a flooded creek, laughing and pointing at deer. The dad was stepping slowly and carefully between the stones and I don’t think he looked up once from his smartphone. His brow was all angsty and crinkled. Don’t be That Guy. Unplug, unplug. Just leave it. The world ain’t going to end.]

So. You’re stressed, but now you’re outside. Stare at something green. Watch a bird for a few minutes (and listen!). Look at the clouds. You will Feel Better.

You think I’m getting all transcendentalist on your ass, but friends, this is Good Solid Science. Go into nature, feel better. The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku: “forest bathing.” (What, that doesn’t reassure you? Good Solid Science).

Feel better? No? Try a real one.

It’s not mystical at all. The scientists who are studying this scanned brains and read hormone output in saliva (!). Their subjects completed wellbeing surveys and cognition tests. Everybody sat in the woods and stared at butterflies with little electrodes pasted to their scalps. And then the same people went to the city and sat on curbs and stared at cars. Results are in: the people who sat in the woods felt better than the people who sat on the curb. And in fact they were better: better at the cognition tests, more sociable, more generous, less irritable, physically healthier and more relaxed.

The Japanese are taking the lead in R&D re: the Nature Cure. They are pouring money into shinrin-yoku parks and trails, hoping to calm down their deeply stressed society. And millions of overwhelmed workaholic screen-addicted (sound familiar?) Japanese are beginning to make forest-bathing a regular therapy. Other countries, like Finland and South Korea, are beginning to follow suit. Even here in the US, doctors and HR folks are trying to figure out whether office plants and screen savers of waterfalls and beavers make for a healthier, happier workforce >.<

Turns out cities and screens–all that constant-input-information-age-multitasking-jabber-jabber–raise our blood pressure and trigger the fight-or-flight cortisol-producing portions of the brain. Cortisol is the stress hormone, kids, and has been linked for decades with higher incidences of suicide, heart attacks and cancer. Not something you want flooding your nervous system all day every day.

Nature, on the other hand, seems to allow us to “turn down” our directed-attention pre-frontal functions. Subjects exposed to nature for even a few minutes report feelings of relaxation, show significantly lower blood pressure, and do better on tasks that require creative thinking and efficient problem-solving. Unplugged time in the the woods is remarkably effective at warding off depression and stress and even fighting certain cancers.

Pretty great, right? So why are you still reading this? As Florence Williams put it in a recent article on the subject: Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning. Close the laptop and give yourself the gift of a fifteen minute forest bath.

 

 

New City Arises Overnight in North Dakota (…Not)

See this interesting neural network of cities and highways–the US at night?

It’s all pretty self-explanatory. Great dark lakes and oceans. The midwest looks pretty quiet. All that corn and soy doesn’t glow (yet).

Oh–look at that big bright city up there in North Dakota–on the top  left. That’s interesting.

Yes, that one.

Thing is, there’s no city that big in North Dakota. Moreover, this light wasn’t there six years ago.

No, it’s not a UFO landing. No, it’s not a redneck nation newly arisen and preparing for secession.

It’s oil rigs, of course, descended on the state to suck the shale dry. Thousands of them–eight new wells a day–with their exhaust plumes burning all hours of the day and night. Denser production than Texas (lower unemployment, too!). I hear there’s great money up there for ecologists who want to do pre-development surveys of all the ecosystems that are going away. I might look into that. It would suit my brooding nicely.

Welcome to the present!

The Apocalypse and Snow and Slow

My dreams of late concern
the apocalypse and snow and slow
wanders through the streets of some dead city.

Also, there were packs of feral housecats that would bring you down just like the lions bring down this elephant. Serious drama starts at about 5:45.

Here’s a Picture of a Beautiful Thing

Have You Seen the Cornstalk Universe?

Here are the creatures and plants that lived in or passed through a 12″ square cube in the Costa Rica rainforest in a 24-hour period:

And here are the creatures that a photographer groping on his hands and knees found in an Iowa cornfield in two nights and three days:

You can read more about this interesting experiment in observational biodiversity here.

“Weekly Apocalyptic, Or Poem Written On The Wall In An Ascending Space Capsule”

We had to stop what we were doing
to see what we had done. Thing was,
we wouldn’t. How devoted we were
to despising one another, to erecting
our own private islands made of water
bottles and various other plastic
disposables. “Will you forgive me?”
was a phrase stricken from our language —
theirs, too, “they” ballooning to include
nearly everyone but that arcane term
“us.” Upon discovering that gulls
feasting on our unearthed dead bodies
died of our toxicity, we sobered up
but couldn’t stand to look at ourselves
in what was left of the light. Despite
what so many movies had taught us, “just
in time” was a tick too late. There was
this bird we used to call a whippoorwill.

by Chris Dombrowski