Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall attempts to tackle a variety of questions that relate to the controversy regarding the reality of climate change. Particularly, it focuses on why many people choose ignore or even deny climate change's existence and what sets it apart from other current threats facing the world. Unlike Eaarth's dramatic use of scientific statistics and gloomy predictions, Don't Even Think About It contains a collection of Marshall's personal investigations regarding the topic, featuring many anecdotes and interviews with experts on various topics.Marshall attempts to approach this controversial topic as objectively scientific as possible, attempting to understand the psychology behind why individuals choose to either accept, deny, ignore, or question climate change's reality. This approach works well as throughout the book Marshall is able to stay focused on the questions he set out to answer without wasting time bashing fossil fuel companies or his opposition (which he could have easily fallen into at several points).
Each chapter is relatively short and focused on answering a particular question or exploring a particular topic regarding believing and disbelieving in climate change. For example, some of the topics Marshall covers include the psychology of disaster
victims, confirmation biases, storytelling, threat perception, and
evolutionary psychological leftovers, to name a few. Don't Even Think About It actually covers a pretty large variety of topics, but manages to tie them all into the book's central focus.Don't Even Think About It draws on years of research and life experience. Marshall recounts visiting and interviewing people from both sides of the climate change debate, both environmentalists and deniers, attempting to lend equal weight to both parties' arguments and exploring the underlying psychology of the controversy. With each topic he digs a little deeper and comes closer to answering the question of why it's an innate human characteristic to ignore climate change (as the title suggests).
The first half of this book is quite interesting. In fact, that short excerpt "We'll Deal With that Lofty Stuff Some Other Day" came from this book, to give you an idea of what sort of writing and content to expect from this book. I haven't finished reading yet, but I'm interested to see where Marshall goes with this book and if he is able to offer any sort of solution to the public's uncaring attitude toward climate change.
Your book sounds very interesting! It sounds as if it expands more on the psychological and moral issues regarding climate change and global warming than many of the books other people are reading. I will be interested to see what the author's final conclusion is. What is the main reason people tend to ignore climate change?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read so far, one of the biggest reasons why peopled choose to ignore climate change is the nature of the problem itself. There's no clear antagonist to single out and fight against, the effects aren't obvious to most people's daily lives, and it seems just far enough away to delay immediate action (among other reasons).
DeleteI have read about half of this book so far. I chose a couple chapters for everyone in class to read since it made such an impact on me. The climate change working group that I am part of will be hosting a community reading of this book at the Kalamazoo Public Library in April. We will be looking for discussion leaders and students in this class who read the book would be ideal for that important job. It reads easily, and, as Jacob says above, it is "quite interesting."
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you picked a really interesting book! Looking into the psychological aspect of why people won't except climate change sounds very insightful and could help to make all of us more open to new ideas.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really interesting topic. I am a huge fan of learning more about the brain and why people do certain things. I hope that this book can really clarify why this happens between people, especially on the topic of climate change.
ReplyDeleteI've heard really great things about this book! I hope you're enjoying reading it! It seems like it would be a great follow up to Eaarth, now that we have some baseline knowledge about climate change.
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