Rebecca Huntley - How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference

I am indebted to Per Espen Stoknes and George Marshall, whose work in the area of climate change communication has been so influential and guided me through the process of writing this book.

A special shout-out to Linh Do for connecting me with so many great climate communicators around the globe.

Thanks to Grant McDowell, Akufuna Muyunda, Ken Berlin, Stacie Paxton Cobos and Dan Kanninen for making time to talk and share their ideas with me.

Thanks to friends and colleagues who supported me through this process: Felicity Wade, Lyndon Schneiders, Damian Ogden, James Bradley, Owen Wareham and the great people at WWF, Blanche Verlie, Kelly Doust, Cecilia Anthony, Louise Wagner, Moksha Watts, Linda Scott, Deanne Head, Amy Stockwell, Sarah Macdonald, Carmen Lawrence and Eloise Spitzer. Thanks to the patience and understanding of my peers at work (Pino, Josh and Rea in particular). Thanks also to the Climate Reality teams, in both Australia and the United States. Thanks to the great people at the Yale Program, especially Lisa Fernandez, Anthony Leiserowitz, Parrish Bergquist, Seth Rosenthal and Matt Goldberg. Thanks also to Professor Carol Johnson and Professor Martha Augoustinos at Adelaide University.

Thanks to Isabella Bowdler for outstanding research assistance.

As always, my spectacular agent, Jeanne Ryckmans from Camerons Management, cared about this project well beyond the confirmation of the publishers contract.

The passion and dedication of the Murdoch Books team was second to none: Lou Johnson, Julie Mazur Tribe, Carol Warwick, Nicola Young and last but definitely not least Jane Morrow.

Thanks also to Daniel Yarrow and the extended Bowen and Yarrow clan for distracting the children while I wrote. And my mum and Graham for letting me move back home from time to time to write as well.

Introduction: A change of heart

>

>

Per Espen Stoknes, What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015, p. 132

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 133

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 133

Thunberg, The disarming case to act

Chapter 1: The problem with reason

Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our planets fight for life, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016, p. 1

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 3839; authors italics

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 81

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 81

Nathaniel Rich, Losing Earth: The decade we could have stopped climate change, New York: Picador, 2019, pp. 180, 200

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 5

George Marshall, Dont Even Think About It: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change, London: Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 121

Chapter 2: Start being emotional

>

>

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 5

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 42

Rich, Losing Earth, pp. 412

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 45

Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 364

Anthony A. Leiserowitz, American risk perceptions: is climate change dangerous?,Risk Analysis, 2005, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 143342

Lorraine Whitmarsh, Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: dimensions, determinants and change over time, Global Environmental Change, 2011, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 690700

Bruce Tranter, Its only natural: conservatives and climate change in Australia,Environmental Sociology, 2017, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 27485

>

>

>

Chapter 3: Green girls

See Danielle F. Lawson et al., Children can foster climate change concern among their parents, Nature Climate Change, 2019, vol. 9, pp. 45862

Lawson et al., Children can foster climate change concern, p. 459

Lawson et al., Children can foster climate change concern, p. 460; my italics

Lawson et al., Children can foster climate change concern, p. 460

See Sifan Hu & Jin Chen, Place-based inter-generational communication on local climate improves adolescents perceptions and willingness to mitigate climate change,Climatic Change, 2016, vol. 138, pp. 42538

Hu & Chen, Place-based inter-generational communication, p. 428

Hu & Chen, Place-based inter-generational communication, p. 425

Hu & Chen, Place-based inter-generational communication, p. 436

Marshall, Dont Even Think About It, p. 187

Marshall, Dont Even Think About It, p. 191

>) for a discussion of this research

Marshall, Dont Even Think About It, p. 189

Marshall, Dont Even Think About It, p. 190

>

>

Wilkinson, How empowering women and girls.

Wilkinson, How empowering women and girls.

Daniel A. Chapman, Brian Lickel & Ezra M. Markowitz, Reassessing emotion in climate change communication, Nature Climate Change, 2017, vol. 7, pp. 8502

Chapter 4: Guilt

>

Glicksman, Your brain on guilt and shame. The author of this article refers to work done by researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 60

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 5

See Stokes et al., Global concern about climate change

Marshall, Dont Even Think About It, p. 193

Jonas H. Rees, Sabine Klug & Sebastian Bamberg, Guilty conscience: motivating pro-environmental behaviour by inducing negative moral emotions, Climatic Change, 2015, vol. 130, pp. 43952

>

Hang Lu & Jonathon P. Schuldt, Compassion for climate change victims and support for mitigation policy, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2016, vol. 45, pp. 192200

Schneider et al., The influence of anticipated pride and guilt

>

>

Lu & Schuldt, Compassion for climate change victims, p. 194

Lu & Schuldt, Compassion for climate change victims, p. 192

Lu & Schuldt, Compassion for climate change victims, p. 197

Chapter 5: Fear

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: A story of the future, New York: Penguin Press, 2019, p. 3

>

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 31

Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, p. 14

Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, p. 13

Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, p. 2

Stoknes, What We Think About, pp. 456

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 40

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 40

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 112

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 27

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 44

See Allan Mazur, True Warnings and False Alarms: Evaluating fears about the health risks of technology, London: Routledge, 2004

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 45

Stoknes, What We Think About, p. 44

Brigitte Nerlich & Rusi Jaspal, Images of extreme weather: symbolising human responses to climate change, Science as Culture, 2014, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 25376

Lisa Zaval et al., How warm days increase belief in global warming, Nature Climate Change, 2014, vol. 4, pp. 1437

See Allan Mazur, Global warming in the fickle news, Social Science and Public Policy, 2019, vol. 56, pp. 61319

>

Bergquist & Warshaw, Does global warming increase public concern?, p. 2

Bergquist & Warshaw, Does global warming increase public concern?, p. 2

Rich, Losing Earth, p. 208

Saffron ONeill & Sophie Nicholson-Cole, Fear wont do it: promoting positive engagement with climate change through visual and iconic representations,