ABSTRACT
Renee Lertzman’s essay is a valuable and welcome addition to a growing volume of work that seeks to understand the human response to the implications of climate change. She successfully argues that the debate should be expanded beyond the social and cognitive psychological descriptions of barriers, gaps and values, and the social marketer’s focus on environmentally friendly behaviour. The chapter offers evidence on ‘how humans cope with and manage anxieties, and how these strategies may inform or impede constructive responses’. This is important to sustainable change workers who come from other backgrounds, such as ecology, urban regeneration or corporate responsibility, for example. Much of our focus to date has been on trying to influence policymakers who fund evidence-based policy campaigns. Thus far these have failed to increase the volume, frequency and potency of the public’s sustainable response to climate change. The main tools have been fear and apocalyptic narratives and a combination of exhortation, education and awareness. Some limited economic subsidies have been targeted at vulnerable groups, but none of these approaches has worked very well so far.
