Even if climate change was a hoax

I think it’s a very smart way of stating in a simple way where some of the problems lie in the social communication of climate change science. This is not the time to go into the details of climate-gate, climate lobbies bar breaks or, in general, the specific disputes on very specific issues about the origin and impact of climate change. The question is, rather, how is it possible that in a supposedly modern society, as with other issues where science has so much to say, unscientific thoughts about climate change find a breeding ground? It is a complex answer but the cartoon points us in another direction. It is not a problem for the deniers, but for how climate science is communicated and, in general, how certain messages are delivered to society. Not only this, but it is also worth asking how it is possible that, knowing what we know, it is so difficult for us to act.

They say, now that we have some perspective, that the alarmist discourse that captivated the world so much in the hands of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth has done little in the long run to build serious international commitments and create greater social conscience and individual commitment. The environmental psychology He knows well how human beings have limitations when it comes to committing to the future and acting in the face of hypothetical threats. We are more of here and now. And our presumptions are strengthened in the face of new evidence.

For this reason, other types of approaches such as the documentary Carbon Nation, have much more depth and better mark the line of where to build not only a more committed citizenry but also better designed and explained public policies. In the trailer, announces a very interesting approach, alternative to what we have seen in An Inconvenient Truth and in other films that have opted for a catastrophic tone and seeks to overcome the denialist discourse abounding in solutionsrather than in the diagnosis of the situation and its causes. As advertised inGOOD, a movie that doesn’t care if you don’t believe in climate change. Perhaps alarmism has not been a good communication strategy to mobilize the population, something of which Al Gore was accused with some reason and who knows if this film will be more successful, not at the box office but with real possibilities to act against change Let’s not renounce, of course, explaining well the entire complex process of climate change and the impacts it generates, but surely we have to better explain the benefits of the policies that have to do with it.

It is not about giving up oil (which is also), but about stopping spending on fossil fuels and creating an intelligent model of energy production and consumption that is cheaper, more reasonable, fairer, more distributed. It is not about making life impossible for the car, but about having cities that we can really enjoy without so many fears (air quality, for example). Any action related to the fight against climate change is worthwhile even if climate change did not exist, even if it was the biggest hoax in history. It is not about playing the game of an anti-rationalist current that rides on the back of positions such as those that we can see in the Tea Party. But it does bring things closer to the most tangible reality. Recently, in a meeting at the office, a colleague ironically asked: “but how are people going to leave the car if it is a fantastic invention!”. It takes you where you want, you can listen to music or the news, you can run if you feel intrepid,… You can even smoke in your own car. He was rightly saying that we have internalized its advantages so much – and its drawbacks so little – that it is very difficult to reach people with messages that imply prohibiting or renouncing.

I am thinking, for example, of how pedestrianization projects have traditionally been explained to get cars out of the center of cities. They have always had the immediate opposition of those most affected, possibly because there is always an emphasis on the fact that the policy is to throw the cars out, make their lives miserable. On the other hand, we managed to explain little about the benefits, which is what is really pursued. We forget to explain that the measure involves gaining citizen space, gaining more people walking and window shopping, gaining air quality, gaining spaces of tranquility,… and that is making a better world, a better city.

You may also like: