The cover feature in the The New York Times Magazine‘s recent “Green Issue,” “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” delivers rich food for thought for communicators. The article delves into what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues. Basically, our tendency to undervalue future benefits, assess risk based on emotion, and deal with a “finite pool of worry” spells trouble for efforts to deal with climate change.

It’s a long article not amenable to summarization, and it’s worth reading in full for the insights it provides on how we might communicate more effectively about climate change solutions.  For example, this nugget: a fee for carbon pollution described as an “offset” gets much more support than one described as a “tax.” Turns out it’s not necessarily the principle of paying for pollution that people object to; it’s the negative loaded term “tax” that inspires rejection.

That’s no surprise, you might think, but in environmentalists’ discussions of the pros and cons of a carbon tax, “people won’t accept a tax” is always a main con. Calling it something else to make it more palatable doesn’t seem to have emerged as a solution. People may fear that it won’t work because the public will see it as a dodge, but that may be true only when you’re using alternative wording that’s already been tagged as misleading and has its own negative connotations–”fee” instead of “tax,” for example.

Such solutions lead author Jon Gertner to an interesting ethical question: is this unfair manipulation? Gertner writes:

[Elke] Weber and David Krantz, two of the co-directors of CRED [Center for Research on Environmental Decisions], have given the matter a good deal of thought, too. ‘People need some guidance over what the right thing to do is,’ Krantz told me. But he said that he was doubtful that you could actually deceive people with decision science into acting in ways that they don’t believe are right. ‘Remember when New York tried to enforce its jaywalking laws?’ he asked. ‘You can’t enforce stuff that people don’t believe should be done.’

I’m with Krantz: what’s the harm in helping people get to an end they want (and I think most people, even if they don’t see it as a priority, would like to halt climate change) by working with their brains instead of against them? Read the article and see what you think.

Well, Earth Hour 2009 came and went, and it was a huge opportunity lost. Sure, it rallied more than 4,000 cities in 88 countries, and Googling it brought up over 49 million results. But, like Joel Makower and countless green bloggers, I wonder why there wasn’t communication from event organizers about what people can do during the other 8,759 hours of the year.

Watching the lights of San Francisco’s city hall and the Bay Bridge wink out from a darkened flat in the Mission district was a bit anticlimactic: the city still looked too well lit. Prior to the event, “Mean Clean Tech” posted on Treehugger, “I will probably have everything off except the TV (ncaa tourney). Like others said, an hour is great but many of us try to reduce our use of energy on a daily basis 24/7 365.”

MCT’s post points up a critical dichotomy: people only change their behavior if it’s convenient, yet they want to be able to save energy all the time. That means, among other things, that communications should inspire action, show people what’s possible, and provide concrete actions.

One company, Toronto Hydro, had a great idea for Earth Hour with its “How Low Can We Go T.O.?” contest. But as of today, there’s zip on the website about who won or how much Toronto saved during Earth Hour—and nothing about what consumers can do every day to save energy or how to extrapolate the Earth Hour savings to sustained results. Ikea, famed for its sustainability practices despite its big-box business operations, participated in Europe, but had nothing going on the United States. Why not? Even the sponsoring organization, the World Wildlife Fund, doesn’t have much about the event results yet. 

Maybe next year?