Are the arts really the most appropriate mode for communications about these issues?

Lertzman, R. (2009). Interview with David Buckland, Founder, Cape Farewell. Environmental Communications, 2(1), 110-118.

The  question in this headline comes directly from Dr. Renee Lertzman. She asked it in an interview with David Buckland, the London-based artist who founded the Cape Farewell climate change project.Buckland's response - basically: yes - was ambling and indirect. For a more precise, even surgical response, you should ask the question of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose transparent fear of artists reveals a clear understanding of their power.

The source for that notion lies in the work of Franke James, who is delivering the 11th Annual Robert Bateman Lecture at Royal Roads University on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015. James is an artist with a highly approachable style - a childlike innocence that can belie the passionate seriousness of her voice. Five or six years ago, she was content to limit that voice to her artistic work. But ever since the Prime Minister's Office intervened to prevent her from mounting a series of shows across Europe, she has also moved more directly into the world of environmental, social and political activism, speaking widely and pointedly campaigning, especially against government censorship in the arts and sciences.

James' work is worthy in its own right and her activism is admirable on many levels. But for this discussion, it is the actions of the Prime Minister that speak most forcefully in favour of the position that art is a powerful communicator. As she has documented so well, through general sleuthing and, especially, through a tireless troll through documents that she has received in several successive and necessarily stubborn Freedom of Information access requests, Harper's office took a direct interest - and launched a pointed campaign against the Euro-showing of her work. It's always tricky to ascribe motive, but circumstantially, those appear to be the actions of a man who understand, and fear, the power of art.

So, if may or may not be "the most appropriate mode for communications about these issues." But it's surely one of the best in a portfolio of possibilities - one we should not dismiss, forget - or discourage.

Best Metaphor Award to Miller and Rollnick: Motivational Interviewing

Miller, W. and Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change. New York: Guilford Press. Chapter 1:  Conversations about change 

Miller and Rollnick describe three communication styles common among people who are advocating or counselling for change: Directing, Guiding and Following. Directing is obvious enough: it's when I tell you what to do - or a doctor tells a patient the right way to take medication. The Following style involves listening and encouraging. M&R say, "I trust your own wisdom, will stay with you and will let you work this out in your own way." All good.

But my favourite metaphor - and quite apparently their favourite style - comes in Guiding. They suggest an analogy to the international travel guide: when you hire one, they don't tell you what to do or follow you aimlessly; they ask you what you want to do and then help make it happen. So clear. And so intuitively compelling as a communications option: here's my number; call me if you'd like some help.

I want a story with a happy ending, even a cliffhanger; just spare me the film noir finale

Marshall, G. (2014). Don't Even Think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. Bloomsbury.

I have a great weakness for Hollywood escapism. Give me a dark theatre, a bag of popcorn and two hours inside someone else's triumphant narrative and I will gladly while away the day. And George Marshall explains why. We all love a compelling story - sometimes even better than we love the truth.

This isn't new territory for me. I have written stories all my life and written about stories extensively, including in the 2009 book, Do the Right Thing, which I wrote with Jim Hoggan. But Marshall lays it out well. He doesn't mention Joseph Campbell or the mono-myth, but in talking about people's weakness for "narrative fidelity," he touches on the archetypal. People love a story that hangs together. And they love, even more, one that features transitory tribulation and ends with victory and reconciliation.

So, don't ask me to go see A Perfect Storm. I read the news stories; I know the good guys die in the end. On too many days, life is too full of reality. It's no wonder people opt out of the truth on the biggest story of our time.

A Tale of Parallel Narratives

Randall, R. (2009). Loss and climate change: The cost of parallel narratives. Ecopsychology, 1(3), 118-129. doi: 10.1089/eco.2009.0034


The psychotherapist (and nice writer) Rosemary Randall argues in this paper that the current public discourse about climate change splits into two parallel narratives: the first, monstrous and terrifying, focuses on losses lurking in the distant future; the second, bland and banal, speaks of a current-day transition devoid of loss or sacrifice. In the face of this conflicting juxtaposition, the public is inclined to ignore, deny or abdicate responsibility for climate problems, disregarding a need to work on solutions

But in a more personal context, I see how this split plays out in my own life. I live in the monstrous future, while those around me dally in the banal present-day, confident that, having taken out the recycling, they are good with the gods. I'm desperate, fearful, angry and feeling doubly helpless because even those in my immediate family are failing to take the issue seriously enough. They, on the other hand, are at peace living in the present, satisfied to tailor their actions to cultural norms.

They also are disinclined to join a funereal procession of mourners, gnashing their teeth and renting their clothes. If the solution is beyond their capacity (and, truly, it is), they see no particular reason to take on the world's suffering prematurely.

It's annoying to note that their position has merit or, at the very least, a logical coherence. I still believe them to be wrong, ultimately, but Randall (and others!) would be correct in recommending that I bring a little more compassion and a little less judgment. There may yet be a middle ground where we can meet, hug, and move forward,

Per Stoknes Climate Paradox: Why do researchers keep ignoring the obvious?

The video, The Secrets of the Climate Paradox, is a wonderful example of one of those communications efforts that waltzes straight past the biggest barrier without so much as an acknowledgment. The vid, on the interesting work of the psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, opens up by saying, flatly, that public misunderstanding of climate change is due to a communications failure on the part of those who are trying to do the good, hard work of bringing the public onside. They say, "Most climate communications speak directly to the head, our rational mind, while ignoring the heart, out feelings and imagination."
On one hand, there's something undeniable here. Climate "education" efforts have been overwhelmingly rational in approach. But this statement, this video and a huge amount of the self-flagellating analysis of climate-ed failure ignores that a whole, incredibly well-funded community of educational and psychological experts are also working in the field - and they have targeted the heart with great effect. First, you have Madison Avenue, selling us all stuff we don't need. And then you have K-street, lobbying politicians and the public with message of fear and deprivation (tied up with the impact of taking climate change seriously) and aspirational twaddle (about an oily world full of jobs, prosperity and a sunny future that rolls on indefinitely with no pipers whatever lining up for payment.
So, I think Mr. Stoknes is missing a "barrier." It is the common mistake that climate communicators are working in a vacuum. In fact, our every effort is being contradicted by a highly organized and incredibly well-funded campaign of actual denial that dovetails perfectly with the clinical denial that seems to be option one for a whole population that, frankly, doesn't WANT to know.

A few (inexpert) thoughts about Valerie Walkerdine, et al.'s Growing Up Girl

Walkerdine, Valerie; Lucey, Helen and Melody, June (2001). Growing up girl: psycho-social explorations of gender and class. London, UK: Palgrave.

I've been enjoying Growing Up Girl, , for its stories as well as its insights. The account of a sprawling research project, it nicely describes both its process and its conclusions, often through the vehicle of stories. But it also gets right to the theoretical point on some important communicative and cognitive issues. For example:

"We maintain that no matter how many methodological guarantees we try to put in place in an attempt to produce objectivity in research, the subjective always intrudes" (p84).

I hear this sentence as someone who has worked in media for most of four decades. Substitute "methodological guarantees" for policies and policing (i.e., editing). Substitute "the subjective" for straight-up personal bias and you have a statement that is so self-evidently true as to be banal.

Another one:

"Put simply, in order to examine other people's unconscious processes you must be able and willing to engage with your own" (p. 85).

Here, again in the media context, reporters biases are not always conscious. Given the current load in a media workforce that has been gutted over the past 30 years, it's sometimes asking a lot that the reporters are conscious at all. Take that into the blogosphere and you get a steady diet of information that is, in a relative sense, unMEDIAted, with thoughtless reporters and no editors at all. It's hard, in that context, to be optimistic about a sudden emergence of courageously self-critical or self-analytical reporting.

Finally: "... anxieties continue to wield their considerable power beyond the rationalizing influence of language" (p. 90).

I love the language. I live in language. I make my living trying to convince others that language is a useful means of communication. And yet, there are people (in my own family!) for whom it is a distant second mechanism for understanding the world. That which is rational is so often just not very compelling.

I;m not precisely sure where any of this takes me, but diagnosis is, presumably, the first step toward treatment and cure. Ya gotta hope ....