7.16.2011

The Psychology of Climate Change Communication

This looks useful: The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public

Download a PDF of the book for free here.

The book is put together by a group here at Columbia: the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED).  I saw a flyer for it today while at a seminar they were hosting on rainfall index insurance. Here's what J. Sachs has to say about it:

“The ultimate solutions to climate change are workable, cost-effective technologies which permit society to improve living standards while limiting and adapting to changes in the climate. Yet scientific, engineering, and organizational solutions are not enough. Societies must be motivated and empowered to adopt the needed changes.  
For that, the public must be able to interpret and respond to often bewildering scientific, technological, and economic information. Social psychologists are aware, through their painstaking scientific research, of the difficulties that individuals and groups have in processing and responding effectively to the information surrounding long-term and complex societal challenges.  
This guide powerfully details many of the biases and barriers to scientific communication and information processing. It offers a tool—in combination with rigorous science, innovative engineering, and effective policy design—to help our societies take the pivotal actions needed to respond with urgency and accuracy to one of the greatest challenges ever faced by humanity: global-scale, human-induced environmental threats, of which the most complex and far reaching is climate change.”  
—Jeffrey Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University

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