Moser:
The reason why I think social science would be really, really helpful, um, for communicators is that it allows us, and it's my deepest motivation, to actually be effective. To actually achieve what I assume communication can achieve. You know, it's…communication itself has evolved and the…the, you know, theories and practices of communication have evolved over time. We ought to stay up with that and…and learn, you know, what do we know about it? We used to think of communication as a one-way transfer of information.
Well, that's an old hat in communication theory at this point. You know, it's a dialogic interactive, um, two-way street of exchange and engagement. What do we know about that? So it involves two people, it involves, you know, a message. It involves, um, feedback from the audience. It involves different channels. What can we achieve, you know, through different channels? Interactive, sort of personal face-to-face dialogue can do much different things than, let's say, mass media communication through a mediated channel. So, you know, as communicators we ought to be interested in what makes us most effective.
Um, so often in the environmental community and the scientific community we say we need to communicate what we know, on the assumption that it somehow will lead to more effective decision making, better policies, behavior change. Well, so that means we also need to understand how does that change happen? How does policy change happen? How does organizational change happen, behavior change? There are, you know…thousands of experts who studied just that, and we ought to take that into account. Can we somehow connect our… whatever we have to say and what we think ought to be heard…[chuckles]…to the people and to the places where those changes can be made. I mean, where are the leverage points? Who is the strategic audience we ought to be talking to?
[What is the “information deficit myth”?]
So the way I would put this myth is that if people only understood, if they only knew how bad this problem is, then they would act. And, I guess in psychology it has a name, this myth, which is the information or knowledge or understanding deficit model. And, you know, what we know from that science is that it's been proven wrong again and again and again. [Chuckles.] And that is more information does not necessarily lead you to take the right actions. It may take… may lead you to, you know, pay attention to the issue or it may lead you to take some action; not necessarily miraculously the right action that somehow we assume that will automatically follow.
I think it's actually one that is not just sort of common for scientists, even though scientists really love that particular…um, they assume that to be the truth, because they are themselves so interested in information and knowledge.
Scientist on Research Channel: “The indicators are saying the same thing: It’s getting warmer. We still have weather. There are still cold days. Your neighbor can poke you in the ribs on a snowy morning and say, “Don’t you love that global warming?” Because we do still have weather: La Nina can cool the Pacific as the currents slosh around. . . .”
Susi: I think it's deeply rooted in our culture since the Enlightenment. I mean, you know, knowledge will set you free, right? [Chuckles.] It will liberate you and empower you to do the right thing.
[Should Communicators Address barriers and Obstacles?]
I used to live in Boulder about three and a half miles away from my place of work. With a bike, twenty minutes in the summer to, you know, ride to work. If I wanted to cross that same distance by public transportation, an hour and a half. I'm not gonna do that. I have things to do. I'm busy. [Chuckles.] So I'm going to drive my car. [Refuelling a car over and over]. And those are the kinds of real life obstacles all of us face that need to be addressed.
You know, there's many other obstacles we might face – not feeling like it makes any difference, or whatever, there are many obstacles. But I think the assumption that knowledge itself will lead to the right behavior change, I think is just too simplistic, and that's what, you know, all the social scientists keep finding.
But, if you want to link your…whatever you have to say to the behavior change or policy change or management change, or whatever you want to achieve, you need to elevate the motivation. Give people really good reason to do that and lower all the…or, at least help lower and address the barriers and resistances people face in making that change.
I think communicators have spent a lot of time focusing on the motivation side.
Al Gore: There has been progress. But. Here is the key. When given a list of challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom. What’s missing is a sense of urgency.
Moser: They don't address the barriers people, um, face when they have to make the changes. And so, I think we need to spend a lot more time really thinking hard about the particular audience we're dealing with. What obstacles are in their way of doing the right thing? And only when we are very specifically thinking about that can we actually begin to help them overcome them.
And that's where our communication…[chuckles]…should focus much more than…People have heard. People are convinced climate change is here. You know, people have heard, um, that, yeah, the coast is eroding. I mean, those are established fact. People see it now, too. Um, it's what to do about it. People don't know a lot about the solutions. People feel quite, um, disillusioned or pessimistic that their little action will address this global overwhelming problem. Sometimes they don't even know what the solutions are or what they could possibly do.
We, as communicators, have failed to show them how their action is one of many, many, many others that can actually shift, um, you know, the trajectory that we're on.
You know, when Martin Luther King gave his famous speech about I have a dream? He didn't say, I have a nightmare, people. Here's, you know, how bad it is. He said, “I have a dream.” I have told you a positive vision of what we want to work toward together.
Martin Luther King: “One day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today! . . . With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
Susi Moser: That's what he gave people. And he was, obviously, a rhetoritician, you know, was wonderful at doing it. But basically, he gave a message of hope. He gave an image of hope.
[On What Indicators of Change Should Communicators Focus Attention?]
Let me give you one sort of very optimistic scenario of the future. And that is that we get together, all of us collectively, and we work as hard as we can on changing our energy system, changing our transportation system, changing our buildings all over, you know, and we get to a very low CO2 emitting future. If we do that, with the still growing population that we have, if we're really, really, really lucky and working really hard, we might get to a scenario that is now on the lower end of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is projecting. You know, 550 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is the most optimistic…[chuckles]…I can come up with at the moment.
Well, that is still double prehistoric levels of CO2, that is still a, you know, two, three degree Celsius warming, or four degree, five degrees Fahrenheit warming, it's a hugely different world than what we have, you know, lived in in the past.
So, basically, people will see more negative impacts…get negative feedback from the environment for trying really, really hard, it's not gonna sustain them staying engaged in doing the right thing. We need to show people, first of all, the right indicators of change, which are gonna be social change indicators, not environmental change indicators. They will all go down negative…[chuckles]… for a long time. For anyone of what…uh, you know, living today, they're gonna see degradation rather than improvement in the climate.
But, we might see positive social change. And that's where we need to direct our people's attention to. And, showing them how that is actually moving toward that positive vision.
Freedom
Marchers [singing] “Deep in my heart/ I do believe/ We shall overcome some day.”
Moser: Eventually we might get back to a climate that is far more conducive and less, you know, disruptive as the one that we will probably create right now. But we need to give people a vision, a positive vision that's worth fighting for and that will sustain their engagement in working toward it.
And it's not gonna be looking at the climate; it will be looking at a sustainable community where there's a lot of social interaction, where we love, you know, being with each other. Where we're not hitting each other over the heads but, you know, giving each other…I don't know, a sense of community and togetherness and… you know, enjoyment…[chuckles]…despite a difficult climate, despite a difficult world.