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Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change Hardcover – August 19, 2014
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An Esquire Essential Book on Climate Change
From the founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, a groundbreaking take on the most urgent question of our time: Why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, do we still ignore climate change?
“Please read this book, and think about it.” --Bill Nye
Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world’s leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovered is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.
With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired―our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blindspots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, it is one we can halt if we can make it our common purpose and common ground. Silence and inaction are the most persuasive of narratives, so we need to change the story.
In the end, Don’t Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury USA
- Publication dateAugust 19, 2014
- Dimensions6.4 x 0.88 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-109781620401330
- ISBN-13978-1620401330
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Marshall] offers advice on confronting climate change head on, stepping away from Green Guilt, and putting potentially world-saving policies into action.” ―The Boston Globe
“Intelligent and genial . . . In the end, Marshall is neither fatalistic nor idealistic about our chances of survival. Yes, he says, we're wired to ignore climate change. But we're also wired to do something about it.” ―Washington Post
“Clearly we're not responding to the reality of climate change with the speed the crisis requires. This book explains some of the reasons that could be--and how we might work around them in the short time that we have.” ―Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth
“The science of climate change is easy: burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gasses that are warming our world. George Marshall reminds us about the hard part: connecting the wellhead to the tailpipe in people's minds as soon as possible. Please read this book, and think about it. Let's get to work.” ―Bill Nye
“Illuminating and important--makes clear why we continue down a dangerous path of increasing climate disruption, even when attractive, hospitable, alternative paths are available.” ―James Hansen, author of Storms of My Grandchildren and Former Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
“George Marshall is one of the most interesting, challenging and original thinkers on the psychology of our collective climate denial. If his advice were heeded, we might just have the courage to look unblinkingly at this existential crisis, and then to act.” ―Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
“Enlightening.” ―Publishers Weekly
“A real soul searching challenge for us all. Marshall illuminates the path to embarking on a heroic quest for a just and equitable world. A sobering, yet hopeful book.” ―Frank DiSalvo, Director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Cornell University
“In 42 engaging, bite-size chapters, Marshall presents the psychological research demonstrating why climate change simply doesn't feel dangerous enough to justify action and how we can trick our brains into changing our sense of urgency about the problem. His work is a much needed kick in the pants for policymakers, grassroots environmentalists, and the public to induce us to develop effective motivational tools to help us take action to face the reality of climate change before it's too late.” ―Booklist
“Fantastic.” ―Grist
“Essential reading for everyone interested in communicating the science of climate change and its urgent policy implications.” ―Critical Angle
“This is not a book to read and put away--but one that merits returning to and engaging with intellectually. Is there a higher compliment that one can give an author?” ―Daily Kos
“Absorbing, all-embracing, immensely readable.” ―Climate News Network
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Product details
- ASIN : 1620401339
- Publisher : Bloomsbury USA; F First Edition (August 19, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781620401330
- ISBN-13 : 978-1620401330
- Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.4 x 0.88 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #588,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #972 in Climatology
- #1,951 in Environmental Science (Books)
- #4,008 in Medical General Psychology
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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The scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change on a very large and destructive scale is overwhelming. It is happening now, and looming dramatically larger in the coming decades. There is yet no consensus to act, much less how to act. The dominant response is to ignore the elephant in the room and hope it will not disturb us further.
Debating the evidence and arguing about what may happen is remarkably unproductive in terms of building consensus for action and changing cultural and economic patterns.
Climate change is global, complex, somewhat abstract most of the time, and occurs in a time frame of decades, all of which make it difficult for humans to respond appropriately. Costs are short term, for benefits which are longer term and not perceived as certain, though in fact they will be massively greater than the costs of action now.
This scenario does not readily yield tangible, emotionally salient images. Climate change is a "wicked" problem, subject to conflicting representations and lacking a clean solution.
Marshall is a communications specialist, knowledgeable about the science, and a good communicator. At present there is no systematic way to analyze the cultural and emotional obstructions to clear understanding, so he takes an episodic approach, presenting data, conversations, and ideas from many sources, building a kind of mosaic as he goes.
The facts are sobering. By mid-century disruptions from global warming - economic instability, food and water scarcity, perhaps military conflict, as well as extreme weather - will be widely visible and disruptive, and costly and difficult to contain. This will affect most people now under fifty years old.
Within the lifetime of people now being born the future survival and viability of human civilization will be determined. This is not far in the future.
Humans have never faced a transition on this scale within a short time frame of a lifetime. The poignancy is that the choice is obvious: give up carbon based fuels, and consume less altogether. Or face chaos and massive human die offs. Which sounds better?
There is not really a simple culprit for our current situation. Massive numbers of people have bought into the high consumption society as a model.
The fossil fuel industries are the core sector of modern economies. They have generated immense fortunes for their owners and their allies in government and the media, who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting confusion and delay in responding to climate change.
After 200 years of industrial society and two or three generations of a consumer orgy, many people are shocked that it has come to an end in basically a single generation. Consuming less "stuff" is not in itself the end of the world. It is compatible with a rich and elegant lifestyle based on "consuming" culture and community instead.
The model of "stages of death" applies here. We are experiencing widespread denial and anger, to be followed by bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Culturally there is a loss, to be sure, but cultural change is not fatal - unless we fail to adapt to the realities. Then we are addicts who deny the cliff's existence as we sail right over it.
For a clear statement of what lies beyond the current cultural confusion, try Not-Two Is Peace, Expanded 3rd Edition . It cuts to the core of this discussion.
I had heard a talk by George Marshall and it was interesting enough to give the book a try.
As it turned out, I was greatly impressed by the descriptions of social conditioning, evolutionary adaptive behavior, and the particular multivalent nature of climate change as valid explanations as to why the response to climate change has been so tepid.
Marshall is not optimistic about a change in the public's consciousness regarding climate change, but his book should be required reading for any who wish to be more effective in reaching out to others in the perhaps futile effort to move the country from apathy to action.
Top reviews from other countries
The subtitle is odd, and really doesn't do the book justice, smacking of reductionistic pseudo-science. This is a rich exploration of the mind and soul, generous in its warmth for humanity and subtle in the tapestry it weaves. My kindle version is a rainbow of highlighting and notes that will inform my campaigning on climate change in future. I have no doubt that this is one of a small handful of books on the topic of climate change which will come to be seen as essential reading.
My only criticism is that although the author is Welsh, the book focuses heavily on the USA, where much of the scepticism comes from. I would have preferred a more global approach.
We need a narrative of hope, something Marshall admits climate scientists with all their statistics and data have been poor at explaining. The book goes some way to providing that.





