Posts tagged “Climate change”

So I’m just topping up on today’s environmental news feed (my feed of choice is The Guardian, a nice little app that even a web dilettante like me can add to their Google home page) and two stories stand out and demand a closer look.

The first states, “Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes“.   The second say, “CO2 is green”, which is less self-explanatory.  In fact, it’s an astonishing TV ad running in the US aimed at scuppering a cap-and-trade bill – thanks to Leo Hickman for picking this up in his blog.

What I notice is that while reading them, I get that creeping feeling up the back of my neck and round to my jaw, and the sinking in my shoulders.  I’m physically cringing.  Not very much.  But it’s there.

And which had the biggest cringe effect?  I can’t be certain, but I’d say that CO2 denialists make me more unhappy than the Met Office’s truly dire research.

So I wonder: what can I learn from this?

That I’m more comfortable with things which reinforce my existing world view, however awful?  Perhaps.

That we need to pull together now and use all our considerable intelligence and organising power to avert the worst and prepare a soft landing, and that I’d rather the US pro-CO2 lobby would ‘get with the programme’.

I’m happier owning up to that as a reason!

The other thing I notice is that these cringe-related feelings are not empowering and motivating.  What I plan to do now is

• forget I read either story,
• remind myself of some of my reasons to be cheerful,
• review my to-do list, and
• plunge into productive work.

Does that make me a denialist too?

I love World Cafe as a ‘technique’ to use in meetings.  And I was privileged to go to one where Peter Senge was one of the facilitators.

This article – a longer version of one I wrote for the environmentalist – explains more about the technique, and the results that emerged from this meeting of a mixture of climate change professionals and activists.

It won’t have escaped your notice that not everyone in the UK loves wind turbines.  So if you’re planning to add to our renewable energy capacity, you might want to think about how to involve your neighbours early on.

In 2005 my article (pdf) in the environmentalist described some interesting initiatives specifically designed to help those promoting or planning wind energy developments, to engage their stakeholders.

I get uncomfortable when greener-than-thou environmentalists criticise others, because of their supposed hypocrisy.

I think it leave us all vulnerable to a similar criticism, and seems lacking in empathy.

That doesn’t mean that I think we shouldn’t pay attention to our own environmental footprint.  What it does mean is that when we are reflecting on our practice as change-makers of one kind or another, we can be a little more sophisticated, and avoid judging ourselves (and others) as either eco-sinners or saints.

In my own work, I’ve been able to help fellow climate-change champions to reflect in a structured way on their personal and collective environmental footprints, and how to manage the (inevitable) incongruence between what they espouse and their personal negative impact, using a workshop format.

That workshop format, and the results, are described in Being the Change for Climate Leadership, first published in Organisations & People, the journal of AMED (the Association of Management Education and Development).

A recent report by the American Psychological Association, featured in the New Scientist, brings together some of the evidence and theory behind the ‘positive thinking’ approach to communicating about climate change.

It goes something like this: people will block up their ears if you tell them the scary facts and make them feel bad.  Instead, discover what already motivates them and makes them feel good, and use that knowledge to promote the new behaviours you’d like them to adopt.  You might not mention the climate change links at all.

The areas picked up the NS article are:

• social networks
• immediate feedback
• competitive instincts
• fitting in with the crowd

I’m very excited that this kind of psychological analysis is seeping into the world of technical experts and physical sciences.   How have you been using psychology to help engaging people more effectively?

There are quite a few courses on offer in the UK to help people speak in public more confidently, knowledgeably and effectively about climate change.

This article which I wrote for the environmentalist examines two of them, focusing on the key points that the trainers are trying to get across.

When I wanted to lose weight and get a bit fitter, I did what millions of women and quite a few men have done around the world – I joined Weight Watchers.  In doing so, I got interested in the parallels between the support and motivations that work for slimming, and the ones we use to promote a low-carbon lifestyle.

So I used them to write an article for the environmentalist in November 2006.