Lesson 1: Communicate Urgency
- The brain has a tendency to react strongly to risks that seem novel, uncertain, uncontrollable, and life-threatening --i.e. COVID-19, immediacy
- Even though it already kills people, Climate Change is predominantly seen as a risk to be faced in the future
- Shaping awareness around climate change requires reframing its message
Lesson 2: Elevate the Voices of Trusted Messengers
We are learning valuable lessons from this Public Health Crisis
- Gallup poll rates nurses as the most trusted profession 18 years in a row
- Can the healthcare community can be more vocal on climate change? Think George Mason Program on Climate Change and Health, Hospital Coalitions, etc.
- Pew demonstrated that six-in-ten Americans say scientists should play an active role in policy debates about scientific issues
- Are you tired of hearing 97% of scientists agree on human-caused CC? Clearly that message isn't working.
- Maybe it is time to hear more from scientists directly, rather than politicians, professors and children.
Lesson 3: Localized Scale Works Best
- Simple attainable solutions that can be done from home are essential (i.e. telecommuting, leveraging video conferencing solutions, like Zoom, to facilitate remote work)
- Decentralized response? Perhaps not the most effective, if we had responded sooner to COVID...
- We are hearing from local leaders... In Atlanta, governor and mayor coordinated efforts...encouraged use of hand san and avoidance of public events
- Global Covenant of Mayors, ICLEI, National Council of Local Governments, etc. building capacity at these hyper-local levels for climate action
More to know
- Shift Perspective, Short-Term vs. Long-Term
- Sacrificing convenience of globalized economy, at least temporarily
- Amazon reducing stock, harder to access consumer goods, like toilet paper
- Recognition of Vulnerable populations
- Like climate change, people who are hit hardest are already vulnerable
- Low-income, elderly, sick
- People are banding together to help them
Be intentional, coronavirus feels personal
- On NPR, Dan Gilbert, Harvard psychologist, argued that climate change lacks four fundamental features that typically trigger an immediate response: Intentional, Immoral, Imminent, Instantaneous
- Show immediacy w/out compromising integrity
- “With some people, climate change is actually more of an imminent threat. I mean, I'm thinking about farmers who are seeing more ruined crops. I'm thinking about people who live in certain regions that are definitely getting more extreme weather.”
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