New Resources Radio Podcast: Communicating Complex Social Problems, with Matthew Nisbet
WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released the third podcast of Resources Radio, a new podcast exploring timely environmental, energy, and natural resources topics.
In today’s episode, host and RFF’s Energy and Climate Program Director Kristin Hayes interviews Matthew Nisbet, a professor of communication, public policy, and urban affairs at Northeastern University. Prof. Nisbet explores effective communications related to complex social problems such as climate change and political polarization.
Relevant quotes from today’s podcast:
- “Climate change has become this embittered, polarized political debate where people can easily view the issue through the lense of their political identity.”—Matthew Nisbet (5:32)
- “Climate change itself—people read into its complexity a lot of their own hopes and desires and their beliefs about what is a good society, and that then influences how technologies and policies are received in these political debates.”—Matthew Nisbet (7:20)
- “We need to create spaces for critical self reflection. The reason that we’ve tended to have a lot of groupthink and path dependency in the strategies we’ve pursued on climate change…is that we’ve often closed off alternative ideas by immediately attacking them as not part of our tribe”—Matthew Nisbet (26:36)
Resources Radio can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud.
Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF is committed to being the most widely trusted source of research insights and policy solutions leading to a healthy environment and a thriving economy.
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed here are those of the individual authors and may differ from those of other RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals.
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