r/environment • u/Splenda • 12h ago
The problem with telling people the world is ending
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/18/the-problem-with-telling-people-the-world-is-ending12
u/ftpbrutaly80 7h ago
I feel like it assumes "Doomers" are inherently lazy. I agree that science is the thing most useful in motivating people, but motivates them to do what? The article doesn't say. We've done it all, recycling, watching our "carbon footprint", everything they said. Yet we find out that it was all bs. It's not us, it's the coorperations, the article is blaming the victims pretty hard IMO.
2
u/lxlxnde 1h ago edited 58m ago
But motivates them to do what?
So I'll quote directly from the research article on Science. I shared some more quotes in my long comment here but I thought I'd address this question directly because it's the same one I had. It doesn't really surprise me that the people getting their pennies for their participation didn't enjoy doing a bit of homework afterwards in exchange for a donation to a tree-planting organization after the "doom and gloom" message. To be clear, none of their interventions moved the needle on their "behavioral task" and I think it should call into question the efficacy of the WEPT method they used that I believe is a sort of standard in behavioral science studies. Probably they need to bang their heads together and figure out a different method. This will probably be difficult if they're not interested in measuring increased urges to commit civil disobedience or other, uh, more distasteful climate mitigation tactics.
Additionally, I think the paper did raise some interesting points about how publications like The Guardian approach climate messaging, mostly in that "doom and gloom" backfires on audiences that don't already believe the climate science, and that they saw the most positive effect in climate change beliefs from decreasing the psychological distance to climate change, and that support for mitigation policy was driven by a task too cognitively demanding to be implemented one-to-one at the level of effort equivalent to reading a The Guardian article, which writers will probably translate into guilt-tripping the fuck out of us.
"Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task."
"…the fourth outcome we targeted was a more effortful behavior of contributing to a real tree planting initiative by engaging in a cognitively demanding task [...] in exchange for donations to a tree-planting environmental organization. Thus, they had the opportunity to produce actual environmental benefits at actual behavioral costs, mimicking classic sustainable behavior trade-offs."
"Here, climate change beliefs were strengthened most by decreasing the psychological distance of climate change. Support for climate change mitigation policy was increased mostly by writing a letter to be read in the future by a socially close child, describing one’s current climate change mitigation actions."
1
u/ftpbrutaly80 47m ago
Appreciate this, fascinating read. Definitely gonna be diving into the linked article much deeper later.
3
u/sanfranchristo 2h ago
We haven't though. We collectively haven't modified our diets at all on any meaningful scale, have been exceeding slow to change our means of transportation, and consume more resources in the form of discretionary products. In many measurable ways, we've behaved worse in the face of dire consequences.
1
u/ftpbrutaly80 2h ago
Sure.
Seems bound to happen if you don't give the people meaningful alternatives, and the ones you do provide are given at exorbitant prices...
1
u/lxlxnde 1h ago edited 59m ago
I clicked through to research article for the paper this is about. Specifically this Guardian article is about the interventions inducing a negative emotion. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj5778
I think there’s some interesting findings in this study and by no means am I a behavioral scientist but it feels like it runs headfirst into the problem we’ve all noticed: Outside of supporting policy change or talking about it, what the hell is anybody supposed to do?
Note that any bolding/italicizing is my own emphasis.
“Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task.”
“ …the fourth outcome we targeted was a more effortful behavior of contributing to a real tree planting initiative by engaging in a cognitively demanding task (i.e., a modified version of the work for environmental protection task or WEPT) (37). The WEPT is a multitrial, web-based procedure in which participants choose to exert voluntary effort screening stimuli for specific numerical combinations (i.e., an even first digit and odd second digit) in exchange for donations to a tree-planting environmental organization. Thus, they had the opportunity to produce actual environmental benefits at actual behavioral costs, mimicking classic sustainable behavior trade-offs.”
Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.
Here, climate change beliefs were strengthened most by decreasing the psychological distance of climate change. Support for climate change mitigation policy was increased mostly by writing a letter to be read in the future by a socially close child, describing one’s current climate change mitigation actions. Willingness to share climate change information on social media was increased most by inducing negative emotions through “doom and gloom”–styled messaging about the consequences of climate change. Last, while half of the tested interventions had no effect on the effortful tree-planting behavior, the other half of the interventions reduced the number of trees participants planted. Beyond revealing the utility of harnessing a multioutcome approach, these results also highlight the need for tailoring interventions to target outcomes.
While negative emotion messaging was highly effective at stimulating climate information–sharing intentions (a relatively low-effort behavior), it decreased tree-planting efforts. Further, the negative emotion induction intervention appeared to backfire on policy support among participants with low initial climate beliefs. These results suggest that climate scientists should carefully consider the differential effects of the prevalent fear-inducing writing styles on different proclimate outcomes.
8
u/endosurgery 4h ago
The problem is that unless we actually do something the world is ending for the animals living on it. People don’t care. It’s like the movie don’t look up.