Don't even think about it : why our brains are wired to ignore climate change / George Marshall.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-246) and index.

1. Questions -- 2. We’ll Deal with That Lofty Stuff Some Other Day – 3. Speaking as a Layman – 4. You Never Get to See the Whole Picture – 5. Polluting the Message —6. The Jury of Our Peers —7. The Power of the Mob—8. Through a Glass Darkly—9. Inside the Elephant-- Coda 1-- 10 The Two Brains—11. Familiar Yet Unimaginable —12. Uncertain Long-Term Costs —13. Them, There, and Then —14. Costing the Earth -- 15. Certain About the Uncertainty – 16. Paddling in the Pool of Worry -- 17. Don’t Even Talk About It! – 18. The Non-Perfect Non-Storm -- Coda 2—19. Cockroach Tours -- 20. Tell Me a Story – 21. Powerful Words –22. Communicator Trust – 23. If They Don’t Understand the Theory, Talk About It Over and Over and Over Again – 24. Protect, Ban, Save, and Stop – 25. Polarization – 26. Turn Off Your Lights or the Puppy Gets It – 27. Bright-siding – 28. Winning the Argument – 29. Two Billion Bystanders – 30. Postcard from Hopenhagen – 31. Precedents and Presidents – 32. Wellhead and Tailpipe – 33. The Black Gooey Stuff – 34. Moral Imperatives – 35. What Did You Do in the Great Climate War, Daddy? – 36. The Power of One – 37. Degrees of Separation – 38. Intimations of Mortality -- 39. From the Head to the Heart – 40. Climate Conviction – 41. Why We Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change ... And Why We Are Wired to Take Action – 42. In a Nutshell-- Four Degrees.

"Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face-to-face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and the activists of the Texas Tea Party; the world's leading climate scientists and the people who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake. With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired--our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink and reimagine climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. In the end, Don't even think about it is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can grow as we deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced."--Jacket.