The week has seen two contrasting perceptions on climate change. On one side we have nearly 40% of US citizens who don’t believe that Climate change is real and its happening even though they are contributing their tax money to flight global climate change (Ref Yale Climate report). On the contrary a country that has been publicly admitting that they are one of the major contributors to climate change has been caught for wrong declarations (Ref NYT).
So, is the common man not shown enough data to believe that climate change is real or rather is he shown the wrong data?
The discussion
Continuing the friday discussion, we began with “What changes mental mindsets?”
Education did turn out to be the popular opinion. It happens at both levels, school and home. Carol Dweck was not wrong in talking about fixed and growth mindsets in people after working on children. But then, educating adults on climate change is not on the same scale as kids.
And then we have the naysayers..
Climate change today is a topic of general discussion, you could find stuff written at all levels. So the more content, the less credible it tends to become. That makes people neglect it. But, its time we get serious about this issue.
Recycling has worked and how?
It looks like the developed world has adopted to the concept of recycling. A more detailed discussion led us to the real fact behind ‘recycling success‘. Apparently there is one item that is being recycled more than the rest. Its the beer can. The incentive of an extra beer has definitely worked its cause.
The attitude of its our time to make a dent!
This is more related to the developing countries who are seeing a change in lifestyles. Economic affordability is good for the world but it shouldn’t at the cost of nature. More money-more stuff-more cars-more pollution and it goes on. It ends up with same development-same pollution but double impact(Time value of money).
Maybe climate change is not cool enough!! (Of course global temperatures are rising)
In the end it was a consensus that media is the clear leader when it comes to creating public awareness on climate change.But are they picking the right points? Probably not. The Syrian crisis is just a news of conflict on the media. But are they considering the right time frame in looking at this. The real climate scientists will tell you that climate change lead to the war (Can climate change spark a war).
We need to make this a public movement and do it before its too late. How did ice-bucket challenge become a popular media driven public movement? It got the public figures into the movement. Hmmm, that brings us to the start maybe we should get James Bond to drive a Tesla instead of Aston Martin!
Thanks guys: Roderick,Allison,Roxanne,Matthew,Madison, Tercia, Michael, Kathleen, Byeronie and Robby.
Mission Shunya 