Despite being one of the most important societal challenges of the 21st century, public engagement with climate change currently remains low in the United States. Mounting evidence from across the behavioral sciences has found that most people regard climate change as a nonurgent and psychologically distant risk—spatially, temporally, and socially—which has led to deferred public decision making about mitigation and adaptation responses.
In this article, we advance five simple but important “best practice” insights from psychological science that can help governments improve public policymaking about climate change. CONT.
Sander van der Linden, Edward Maibach & Anthony Leiserowitz, Perspectives on Psychological Science