Language matters more than ever when the conversation turns to climate change

George Marshall has been writing and speaking onclimate issues for 25 years now.

The author of Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change spoke to Russell Bowers on Daybreak Alberta Saturday. Marshall is in town for the Pembina Institute's Alberta Climate Summit, to deliver a message that if Alberta doesn't wantto be left behind, it needs to leadthe climate change conversation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. How much did you know about the feelingsaround energy extraction?

A.I'm well aware Albertahas really taken a strong leadership on the issue, but I have to say the general impression [of Alberta out in the world] continues to be one of the dirt anddamage done by the oilsands anda sense of Albertabeing part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

I think what's very interesting coming here is you see an immense potential for change andan enormous willingness for change too.

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Q. Calgary author Chris Turner talks about the idea of resources as a form of communal identity. What do you think of that notion?

A.The important thing to say is to take a step back is that climate change as a whole, as an issue and indeed renewables are always bound up with people's values and identity.

A big mistake [we have all made] from yearsand years of talking about these things, is thinking that becausethey're led by science which of course they are that we can talk [about them] in this very rational, abstract, scientific way: Here's the data, here's the parts per million, here's the projection not realizing that people see andinterpret everything they hear through the lens of their own values andtheir own identity.

And that can be positive and negative. If people feel that something threatens who they are, they can push it away, regardless of the substance of it. It's interesting visiting Albertafrom outside, realizing how completely resources are bound in with people's identityhere.

As a pioneering province, that pioneering spirt is still strong. This is a province built on resources.

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Q. You're from Wales. What's the identity of the community like there?

A.Wales has an economy built on resources built on slate, built on lead, built especially on coal. We did a lot of work with the Welsh government a number of years ago to design the way they could talk to people about it and it was very clear there that dissing coal dirty filthy coal was really undermining people's sense of pride in their heritage.

So it's clear it needed to be discussed andframed in terms of saying, we are a resource economy. Our wealth is built on the prosperity of the resources, of natural resources we have.

We can transfer those kinds of lessons directly to Albertatalking about 'natural resources' I think is very powerful.

Fossil fuelsare a natural resource and then therefore, [you say that] moving from one natural resource to another is not going against what happened before it's building on it in a positive way.

Q. How do you do that?

A.This is a resource economy, this is an energy society and energy is a positive word too.

Energy is not just of the fuels, it's the energy of the people, it's the drive, the ambition, it's the positivity it's a high energy society.And now let's look not at abandoning the past, but let's look at bringing online a more diverse, more balanced form of energy sources.

That balance thing is an important part of the equation too. In my conversationshere, it's pretty clear to me that many people are well aware andhave in many cases, been badly hurt by the overdependence on a single energy sector so let's say OK.: Let's have a balance.

We have different forms of natural resources andcan spread the learning experience. But from an identity perspective making people proud of what's been done before. The ingenuity, and hard, dirty work let's face it that has built the wealth and the health services, and everything which people are so proud of here that's something to be respected andvalidated andindeed extended in the future in new forms.

With files from Daybreak Alberta

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