George Marshall (2)

If we don’t think about it, we think it will go away

Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall (Bloomsbury USA, $27).

George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, is a veteran climate activist who has spent a long time talking to people about climate change. He’s also traveled extensively to interview climate change deniers, and what he’s learned is unnerving.

A little bit neuroscience and a little bit show more psychology, Marshall writes that climate denial isn’t just a question of evidence; instead, it’s related to our inability to see climate change as an immediate threat. We’re wired to deal with immediate dangers—like that lion in the grass or that guy with a gun—and the long-term effects of a slow disaster like this one don’t compute.

But that’s only part of the problem. Add in the simple reality that actually responding to the climate crisis will demand sacrifices—financial sacrifices as well as some to our comfort—and it becomes a bit easier to see why people aren’t anxious to drop their indifference.

Marshall points out, optimistically, that we’ll make sacrifices if we think the circumstances warrant; to that end, his conclusion is titled “Some Personal and Highly Biased Ideas for Digging Our Way Out of This Hole.”

This is a necessary—if depressing—book.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

This is a real curate's egg of a book. Of course, in the original Punch cartoon, that phrase was a polite way of saying, "rotten": I use it in the more regular colloquial way to mean that there are some very good AND some very bad bits.

Firstly, the book is eight years old and climate change is a fast moving problem. This book is entirely based upon the rise in CO2, rather than the modern norm of bringing mass extinction, soil degradation, ocean acidification and climate justice, to name just show more a few of our problems.

The book is a strange amalgam of both English and American idioms and spelling which, can be rather disconcerting as is the number of unchecked spelling and grammatical errors. This may seem petty but, when the purpose of the book is to emphasise the importance of accuracy in the way we present climate change, I would have liked better.

OK, so now that I have savaged the book, why have I given it four stars?

George Marshall includes conversations with a multitude of 'players' in the climate sphere: not all of a single view. Climate deniers get their space but NOT the old BBC standard of allowing some flat earther to have equal airtime to a respected scientist!

Considering the age of the book, I was also impressed to find information that has not been repeated in the many other climate books that I have consumed.

The last chapter's report of 4degree centigrade acceptance is particularly interesting. Although, we are likely to be heading for a similar figure now, we are not allowed to mention anything over one and a half degrees!

Worth a read. show less