Climate-change activists should take some lessons from the mismanagement and miscommunication surrounding the pandemic. In both cases, people across the political spectrum feel helpless in the face of the problem. In both cases, experts need to figure out how to get people to overcome these feelings and act.

True, they aren’t perfect parallels; climate-change action faces a hurdle that hasn’t come up in the pandemic: a powerful fossil fuel lobby that’s been clever and influential, seeding public doubts about the science behind climate change. Still, climate-change denial is becoming rarer all the time, according to a survey released in April. It shows more than half of Americans believe human activity is causing climate change, and 64% say they are worried about it.

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With the pandemic, people are feeling “done with Covid” in part because they expended so much energy on things that, in retrospect, didn’t have much efficacy — from disinfecting mail to keeping kids out of playgrounds to attempting to jog in masks.

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experts in both areas have been too condescending and too focused on how to manipulate people to behave, said Baruch Fischhoff, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Scientists Love Issuing Warnings. Here’s One for Them. – Bloomberg Paid Subscription Required.

This seems obvious. I no longer trust public health or epidemiology. It’s been 2 1/2 years of inconsistent, contradictory, incoherent, illogical – and frequently untrue – official statements. Technocratic elite ordered us to behave – yet simultaneously, hundreds of elite experts were caught ignoring their own orders. They refused to listen to outside input – they were smarter than us plebians – we should know our place!

On social media, scientists routinely trashed each other – rather than their theories, descending into middle school name calling behavior and worse. None of this inspired confidence in Science.

Regarding climate change, I’ve replaced our home’s ceiling insulation with R-60, installed a full solar PV electrical system, installed 220 v outlets in the garage and outside for future EV charging, heat our home entirely with locally sourced wood pellets (which the UN calls a carbon neutral, renewable resource), and moved to consuming meat less than 2x / week. We’ve recently added composting of green stuff and food scraps. My 2015 compact car averages about 42 mpg and taking lifetime, full lifecycle energy into account, is more effective, energy-wise, to keep driving it than to replace with an EV.

But at the end of the pandemic, I’ve lost confidence in Science. No more free pass. I no longer know what to believe about climate change. And even if I were a “believer”, I have zero confidence anyone in government or other positions of power will craft an effective solution. Instead, they will do what public health just did – plenty of authoritative technocratic hand waving that ultimately accomplished little to nothing but caused enormous harm. Those of us with insufficient initials after our name, and lacking a Blue check, are told we are stupid, and our questions are irrelevant.

I’m not sure how the climate change community overcomes this hurdle – it’s a problem that may just be starting to bubble up. No more free pass.