Long Nguyen’s Reviews > Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change > Status Update

People are best motivated when an action reinforces their identity and sense of belonging to their social group.
Climate change should not be regarded as an isolated intellectual exercise and we should create communities of shared conviction.

Last chapters are not so great for me as the author quite overtalked about the relation between climate change and religion.

They defined climate change as an environmental issue and therefore not a resource, an energy, an economic, a health, or a social rights issue. They determined that it would be best managed through emissions trading, and therefore not through regulation, taxation, and rationing.

It was hoped that bringing so many people together would itself create the historic moment; as though the concerts along could single-handedly create a social norm for action. But in the absence of a clear objective and a movement that could galvanize the audience into action, it created a global bystander effect: two billion people waiting on the sidelines to see if someone else would do something

Our views are constantly being shaped through the negotiation between our own identity, our group loyalty, and our relationship with wider society