How do we point worldview change in the right direction?
We need radical changes in our views and behaviour to catalyze sustainable measures to reduce climate change impacts. This includes the ideas of sufficiency (having enough rather than having to buy more) and adopting more sustainable lifestyles (eating less meat, using public transport).
These sorts of behaviours are hard enough to change in people when they first have to be convinced of climate change (competing with disinformation) and then have to change the viewpoints that they’ve been fed for their entire lives (capitalism, materialism, consumption, travel).
Another, increasingly thorny obstacle to change is disinformation, which feels particularly powerful in cases where it convinces people that they can do what they want, like seeing their friends during a pandemic, or continuing to live exactly as they always have with no consequence. This article, by Quinta Jurecic in the Atlantic shows that even when there is a direct empirical answer in a direction that people want like there is with vaccine efficacy (get this vaccine->reduce illness-> see your friends), we still are seeing this backlash and surge in false information (even amongst medical professionals).
A huge part of dealing with many aspects of the polycrisis will be in changing worldviews across many systems sensitive to disinformation.
-Polycrisis Fellow Megan Shipman