Ideas worth spreading

How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming

3,327,326 views |

Per Espen Stoknes |

TEDGlobal>NYC

• September 2017

The biggest obstacle to dealing with climate disruptions lies between your ears, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes. He's spent years studying the defenses we use to avoid thinking about the demise of our planet -- and figuring out a new way of talking about global warming that keeps us from shutting down. Step away from the doomsday narratives and learn how to make caring for the earth feel personable, do-able and empowering with this fun, informative talk.

The biggest obstacle to dealing with climate disruptions lies between your ears, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes. He's spent years studying the defenses we use to avoid thinking about the demise of our planet -- and figuring out a new way of talking about global warming that keeps us from shutting down. Step away from the doomsday narratives and learn how to make caring for the earth feel personable, do-able and empowering with this fun, informative talk.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Learn more about your impact on the environment by calculating carbon footprint.

Join a local group or community for working on solutions for society like Citizens Climate Lobby.

Get inspired for some personal action by watching popular climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe lay out some of your options and opportunities.

About the speaker

Per Espen Stoknes

Per Espen Stoknes

Psychologist, economist

See speaker profile

Per Espen Stoknes weaves together psychology and economics in imaginative ways, often revolving around our human relationships to the natural world and to each other.

Per Espen Stoknes | ChelseaGreen, 2015 | Book

What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action

In this book, you can learn more about the full argument outlined in the talk. It identifies the five main psychological barriers to climate action and also addresses how to move beyond them with five evidence-based strategies for how to engage with global warming in a way that creates action and solutions, not further inaction and despair. The last part of the book opens up more existential and personal understandings of our relationship to the air, that nourishes our being and all of life.

The Guardian labs | Per Espen Stoknes | Article

"Three steps to achieving a sun-rich future"

The credible story of how we will solve the main part of global warming in three profitable steps to achieve a sun-rich future. It’s a small article painting a realistic, hopeful large picture of the next 20-30 years, based on a consistent quantitative model, exemplifying the power of narrative in visioning the kind of future we want.

George Marshall | Bloomsbury, 2014 | Book

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired—our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe.

| Explore

Yale Climate Change Communication

Maybe the world’s leading site on climate psychology research, led by Tony Leiserowitz. Annually updated surveys of the American mind’s perceptions and attitudes about climate change, and lots of analysis and scientific articles, well communicated.

| Watch

The Secrets of "The Climate Paradox"

This funny, 8-minute animation gives an accessible and compact summary of the main psychological dynamics behind the psychological climate paradox; that the more certain the science becomes, the more many of us disengage.

| Watch

ClimateTalk: Science and Solutions | Susan Joy Hassol | TEDxUMontana

In this talk climate communication expert Susan Hassol distills her most valuable learnings and advice from decades of assisting climate scientists to translate their abstract data and findings into plain English that people can understand.

| Explore

Alliance of Wild Ethics

Explore deeper existential and phenomenological understandings of humanity’s relationship to the more-than-human world, by reading some open essays by related thinkers.

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Learn more about your impact on the environment by calculating carbon footprint.

Join a local group or community for working on solutions for society like Citizens Climate Lobby.

Get inspired for some personal action by watching popular climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe lay out some of your options and opportunities.