In the round up this week: more on morals, climate framing tips, and some cool links.
If you’re a science communicator or educator at an informal science center (such as a zoo, aquarium, or museum) trying to encourage conservation action – this is the round up for you! Every week we break down the most interesting recent news and best resources to help you frame the issues as effectively as possible.
Contextualizing climate
There's been a lot of interesting talk about making climate change a moral issue lately. I wanted to share a few more very worthwhile reads I came across this week.
Morality is missing from the debate about sustainable behaviour
Adam Corner writes about a recent paper which investigated the motivations of people who had made major, environmentally-friendly changes in their lifestyles. The paper concludes that the biggest motivation is a belief in social justice.
But - whose place is it to tell people what is morally right? If you're coming from the perspective of a zoo or aquarium, don't worry, our research has found that ZAM (zoo, aquarium, and museum) guests do expect and want recommendations for environmentally-friendly actions during a visit. David Roberts at Grist makes a good argument for putting science in context:
The futility of “just the facts” climate science
Roberts argues that yes, people deserve to have scientific facts placed into appropriate context by scientists themselves (which has also been the subject of much discussion recently). He says: "... a democratic public does not want bare facts. It wants meaning. It wants to know why climate science matters and what can be done about it. More fundamentally, it’s not just that people want meaning, it’s that they only absorb facts through meaning."
Framing Climate Snapshots
Climate is a big issue - so big it can be hard to see. Also, kind of weird and confusing. The best way to make climate change seem real and important to your audience is to frame it in a way they understand. Here are some of the most interesting insights and tips on framing climate I found this week:
Rebranding Climate Change as a Public Health Issue
Talking about the human health implications of climate change isn't a new idea, but this article is an interesting overview and filled with links for further reading.
16 Of Your Favorite Things That Climate Change Is Totally Screwing Up
Cool snippets on why, if you love drinking beer while watching football and wearing a sweater, you might want to worry about climate change. Things like this tend to pale in my mind in comparison to the human health/justice issues of climate change, but can serve as an interesting jumping off point for bigger conversations.
Great, succinct general tips for talking climate change with someone who may not have thought about it or be very receptive. Must log in as a ClimateAccess member (free) for full document.
Four Hiroshima bombs a second: How we imagine climate change
How do we visualize climate change? This is a cool summary of a study that tested different photos and measured how people reacted to them re: "salience" – whether it raised the importance of climate change & empowerment and "self-efficacy" – the sense of being able to take any action on climate change.
Other stuff
A few other interesting articles worth checking out.
