After reading David Roberts’ article I have come to an understanding that attempting to scare people into saving the planet won’t work. Appealing to emotions is a struggle because everyone has a different emotional response to what they are told. Because of this, attempting to appeal to emotions by scaring people into saving the environment won’t work. The best thing we can do is give people hope, and even then you will have people reluctant to help the earth. Overall, we need to act as a whole in order to make a significant change
Weekly Forum
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After reading David Roberts piece on climate change, I’ve realized that in order for anything to change we cannot focus on making each individual want to recycle more. We as a society must find a way to make living an eco-friendly lifestyle a social norm. It doesn’t really matter what one person does if it does not become a part of the culture. Scare tactics and flashy adds only go so far. It seems like scientist are telling people how important it is to solve the problem, but not offering much of a solution. Roberts warns against using emotional ploys to get attention because it does not create results instead it just creates stress.
Linda Hogan wrote several short story style passages to commemorate her heritage and bring people back to respecting the land. She created a world in these passages that recognizes animals in spiritual manner. She explains the respect for the land that comes from her heritage. Her goal is to remind people of the days of humans living off the land and the mutual respect that was required to do so. Her idea if that if we are kind to the land and nature around us it will in turn be kind to us as well. If we want any sort of sustainability for this planet we all need to go back to our roots and start giving as much to the land as we expect it to give us.
Linda Hogan's selections demonstrate her connection and experiences with nature. She is religiously reverent of the environment and its animal and shows a profound respect for the natural world around her. The selections showed a deep respect for the earth that isn't abundant in society today.
I feel like this connects to the claim in the article debating about the impact of positive and negative emotions on people's view of the environment and climate change. The emotional impact of a recent experience can die off (whether it be fearful or hopeful) but repetition can inspire a long-lasting impact. From Hogan's writings, the care and devotion is evident. It is clear that she wishes to preserve and protect nature as she sees it as a powerful entity. I can assume that this mindset and these teachings were instilled in her through a repetition of events and interactions, and not one isolated occurrence.
I think how people talk about they environment is important to how it can be viewed. In Linda Hogan's "Dwellings" she talks about her spirituality and the environment. Her stories were so refreshing to read, and I think reading those stories could give you a different perspective on nature and the environment. Talking about the environment in a positive way is important because if you see nature as being benevolent, why would you need to fight it? If nature is for us why are we against it? This also relates to the other articles we read for this class. They both kind of talk about how different people talk about the environment and how effective their views are. The New York Times article was so effective because of the emotions it made people feel. Maybe the environment seemed too scary or pessimistic, but it got people to read about it. I think seeing nature as being real or alive makes people listen to what you have to say about it.
The Vox article talks about the impact emotions have on our views of climate change, “ the most motivating emotions are worry, interest and hope. Importantly, fear does not motivate, and appealing to it is often counter-productive as it tends to distance people from the problem, leading them to disengage, doubt and even dismiss it.” We say we “worry” about climate change yet in 2015 articles and fear began surrounding an idea in which Earth would be gone or at least all the resources were gone by 2050. Whether or not this idea becomes true, the worry and fear did not last long. There were some new low-emissions options become readily available but not much else has been done since by large companies.
The article used a social psychological perspective to find no one really knows what we’re talking about. Of course there is lots of hope and speculation things will get better but society hasn’t proven it cares enough to change anything. Let’s look at some facts, and this is only plastic. 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been introduced since its creation in the 1950’s. 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in our oceans each year and “if plastic production isn’t curbed, plastic will outweigh fish pound by pound by 2050” (Earthday.org). We use 4 million tons of trash per day, for reference it could fill 10 Empire State buildings. If we know our plastic consumption alone will be detrimental to climate change and overall ecosystem health, why does it seem no one cares or at the very least why we have so many climate change non-believers? Though climate change should not be something up for debate in political settings, it is. President Trump and his cult followers are under some impression climate change isn’t real and it’s a made up construct despite so much evidence pointing to the contrary.
The issue with climate change is people don’t know whether to be hopeful it will get better or fearful and worry it is only going to get worse.
https://www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-end-plastic-pollution/
The article used a social psychological perspective to find no one really knows what we’re talking about. Of course there is lots of hope and speculation things will get better but society hasn’t proven it cares enough to change anything. Let’s look at some facts, and this is only plastic. 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been introduced since its creation in the 1950’s. 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in our oceans each year and “if plastic production isn’t curbed, plastic will outweigh fish pound by pound by 2050” (Earthday.org). We use 4 million tons of trash per day, for reference it could fill 10 Empire State buildings. If we know our plastic consumption alone will be detrimental to climate change and overall ecosystem health, why does it seem no one cares or at the very least why we have so many climate change non-believers? Though climate change should not be something up for debate in political settings, it is. President Trump and his cult followers are under some impression climate change isn’t real and it’s a made up construct despite so much evidence pointing to the contrary.
The issue with climate change is people don’t know whether to be hopeful it will get better or fearful and worry it is only going to get worse.
https://www.earthday.org/fact-sheet-end-plastic-pollution/