The Blue Notebook

Last month the Washington Post reported on research indicating that information campaigns which try to counter commonly held misconceptions may actually serve to reinforce them. (Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach, by Shankar Vedantam, 9/4/2007).

I find this maddening in the extreme, but on further reflection don’t know why I should be surprised. I claim it’s possible to convince people with words that acting locally and thinking globally is in their own best interests, but it’s clear that I’m going to need more than a trip to the Blarney Stone to reach that buried part of the human brain where we manufacture our contrary-to-fact conclusions and then hold on to them for dear life.  

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As I transition from writing for The Man to writing as an independent contractor, I’m casting about for an interesting topic to shop around to the environmental magazines. Meanwhile, several people, in quite random fashion, have started talking to me about something called “eco-psychology.”

So I found a mental health professional who practices in this area (locally even), and have made an appointment with him–not to find out where my own neuroses lie, since I know those all too well, but to find out what is troubling people, and what is keeping otherwise caring and conscientious folks from moving from a studied apathy to awareness, and from awareness to action on the topic of — let’s just call it Biodiversity Crash.

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I was intrigued by an article in this weekend’s Seattle Times Pacific Magazine about a proposal to develop some of the unusual geological features of Eastern Washington into an interpretive tourist route focusing on climate change.  In some ways it’s kind of goofy: I’m just not picturing a carload of tourists from Wisconsin schlepping from kiosk to kiosk across the state and dutifully snapping pictures of impending doom.  On the other hand maybe it’s just the kind of thing needed to take global warming out of the category of abstract debate. The ultimate audio-visual aid.

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