How exactly does one break a deeply embedded myth? We often believe that bombarding people with facts and figures is the best way to combat misinformation. But busting myths is not just about providing more data — it’s about presenting the data in a way that people will actually process it.

John Cook, founder of the popular climate website Skeptical Science, likes to think about the way people think.

As a climate communications fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Cook devotes his time to understanding how the booby traps and backfire effects within the human mind allow us to embrace myths, even when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In this podcast, we’ll have a lengthy discussion with Cook about how to counter the backfire effects within the brain. He’ll discuss his recent “Debunking Handbook,” which he co-authored with the cognitive scientist Stephan Lewandowski, and apply his research to the manufactured “debate” over climate change:

“Because there is such an organized disinformation campaign, we need to be as scientific and evidence based as we can in our response. Which means take advantage of all this psychological research and that will help us form the most effective responses we can in trying to reduce the influence of disinformation.”

“For a long time, scientists have been operating under the information deficit model, saying that if we could just get more information to people, then that will solve the climate problem…but there’s more to it than that. We need to understand how people think, how they process information, so when we do try to reduce the effect of disinformation — and we have to do that — then we can do it more effectively.”

The Climate Progress podcast is now on iTunes. If you want to get automatic updates when we post new shows, you can subscribe to our feed through iTunes. For manual updates, check out our RSS feed.

And if you want to read about the concepts we discuss in this show, check out the below posts on the various backfire effects:

• The Debunking Handbook Part 1: The First Myth About Debunking
• The Debunking Handbook, Part 2: The Familiarity Backfire Effect
• The Debunking Handbook Part 3: The Overkill Backfire Effect
• The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
• The Debunking Handbook Part 5: Filling the Gap With an Alternative Explanation

 

In 2011, two deeply intertwined themes dominated international climate and energy stories: equity and the intersection of the economy and the environment.

“These two themes – equity and economy versus environment – will continue to shape stories in 2012,” says Manish Bapna, acting president of the World Resources Institute, in an interview on the Climate Progress podcast.

The Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, and protests in China all forced leaders and journalists to talk about issues of equity. And those movements all influenced climate and energy stories in some way.

“What’s quite interesting is that those notions around justice and around inequality played out not only politically…but also played out in the environmental arena,” says Bapna.

Protests in Tunisia and Egypt were sparked partly because of rising food prices – raising awareness of how climate change may impact agriculture and thus help drive political and social conflict.

The Occupy Movement helped breath new life into the Keystone XL protests, helping environmental groups delay – if not possibly stop all together – the tar sands pipeline that was considered a “done deal” last summer.

And in China, a wave of protests against oil spills, coal plants and air quality stimulated greater discussion of environmental issues in the country.

The events of 2011 came to a head at the Durban climate talks, where a last-minute agreement rested on fairness: “Equity has to be the centerpiece of the Climate discussion and our negotiations should be built on it,” said India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan before agreeing to loose language that may bring developing countries on board for long-term emissions reduction commitments.

Meanwhile, as developed countries struggled with debt crises, high unemployment and sluggish economies, the political debate over the prudence of environmental protection raged on.

While some European countries rolled back support mechanisms for renewable energy, the region stayed committed to aggressive emissions reductions targets through 2020.

In the U.S., the picture was decidedly more negative. Energy became an extraordinarily contentious topic and conservatives pushed forward a political narrative that environmental protection and economic growth are diametrically opposed.

“This issue will undoubtedly be central to elections in the U.S.,” says Bapna. “And the way candidates respond will tell us a lot about how the President and Congress will deal with them in 2012.”

In this podcast, we speak with WRI’s Bapna about how concerns over equity and economic growth will influence a wide range of global issues, including climate policy in China, world-wide investment in renewable energy, and the conversation moving from the Durban climate talks and into the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development.

To listen to the interview, play the podcast above.

If you want to get automatic updates of our podcast, subscribe to us in itunes. You can simply go to itunes, search for Climate Progress, and click “subscribe free.” If you don’t use itunes, you can follow our RSS feed.

This weekend’s 12,000-person protest in Washington against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline proved that the environmental movement has a strong presence in the coming elections.

But for all that strength, the movement is missing one key ingredient: A tangible plan for our economy without the tar sands pipeline.

Sure, activists have clear demands for greater support of clean energy, effective clean air and water standards, strong local land rights, and national action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the short-term economic arguments in favor of this pipeline — no matter how grossly inflated — may outweigh some of those environmental concerns. No one has yet presented a comprehensive, business-focused vision for the U.S. without the pipeline. Until now.

The Rocky Mountain Institute just released it’s latest book, Reinventing Fire, which provides a “grand synthesis” of decades-long research on how to create a profitable transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to an efficient, clean energy economy by 2050 that is 150% bigger than today — with no major technological breakthroughs and no major act of Congress.

Yes, you read that correctly.

We had a chance to sit down with RMI’s Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Amory Lovins, to chat about how the plan came together:

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Sometime this week, the 7 billionth child will be born. And there’s a good chance that child will be living in energy poverty.

Even today, there are roughly 1.5 billion people living without access to modern electricity services, limiting education opportunities, health services and quality of life. And there are 2.5 billion people who only have access to biomass for indoor cooking — resulting in more deaths per year than Malaria, according to the World Heath Organization.

Expanding access to these billions of people in energy poverty is one of the most important global challenges of our time, says Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. And not doing it in a way that also addresses climate change will be “the biggest threat multiplier of all,” he says.

“The poor will play the biggest price if we continue business as usual. If countries impacted by climate change don’t have resilience capabilities, they become failed states,” says Yumkella. “We see this as the issue of the century.”

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I’m happy to introduce our first episode of the Climate Progress Podcast!

As an extension of our coverage here at ClimateProgress.org, our show will be devoted to communicating the science and solutions of climate change through engaging interviews with news makers, thoughtful analysis and occasional documentary-style reporting.

Our first show features a wide-ranging interview with Climate Progress editor Joe Romm, who explains why the scientific community needs a strong voice in communicating the science of climate change. We’ll also chat with Carbon War Room CEO Jigar Shah about how to profitably deploy clean energy solutions.

To listen to the show, launch the player below.

Shah, a solar-industry rock star who founded the pioneering solar company SunEdison, candidly shares his views on why doubters of today’s renewable energy technologies are so wrong:

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