How To Make People Care About Big Things
I’ve been thinking a lot about how change happens. It seems to me to be one of those foundational questions. So I invited a dozen really big thinkers (and feelers) to talk to me on Kelly Corrigan Wonders and at the end of each conversation, I summarized my takeaways in the hopes that they will be useful to us all as we inch our way toward something better.
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is as interested in ecological collapse as she is in how to talk so people will listen. In our conversation, we break down the moves and messages that do and don’t work when trying to change attitudes. My 17 year-old Claire jumps in to talk about the power of Planet Earth, protests and extinction stories.
1. The biggest problem we have around climate change, and I suspect most other dire global challenges, is psychological distance.
2. Even though nature seems so vast, the planet’s resources are not infinite.
3. Picture trash.
4. Language, and particularly metaphor, is how we make the abstract concrete.
5. Scientists don’t have a spotless record.
6. 100 companies are responsible for 70% of heat trapping gas emissions since the dawn of the industrial era.
