If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone who already knows that climate change is a massive process in progress, and who already believes that action is needed to address it – both mitigation and adaptation. More than just facts and comment, therefore, these notes probably need to include more ideas and aids for action – recognizing, as I’ve noted elsewhere over the years, that information (inform-ation) is an action, at least as much as it’s a thing.

The verb “to inform” has been around since the fourteenth century, unlike the far more recent coinages of information-as-thing (bits and such) by people like Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon and John Tukey. It’s crucial to appreciate that “informing” someone is a result rather than merely an activity. The Latin root of the word is the verb infōrmāre, “to form” or “to shape” – so, merely telling someone something does not genuinely “in-form” them. There needs to be a change of understanding, a “manifest effect,” if we want to claim that an act of “inform-ation” has taken place.

Achieving a change of understanding is difficult when people would rather not have to deal with the implications, with climate change being a prime example; it would therefore be malpractice for me to share mere observations about the subject without also offering “what next?” thoughts on changing minds and behaviors.

The challenge of turning message into motivation can be measured – for example, by a study of people’s reactions to the movie “The Age Of Stupid” (a “future history” treatment that I mentioned here two weeks ago). As reported in the journal Global Environmental Change (my boldfacing added),

60% of respondents to the follow-up questionnaire attributed at least one action they are taking (or doing more of), to the effect of having seen the film. However, heightened levels of concern and motivation were no longer in evidence at the time of the follow-up survey, 10–14 weeks after the release of the film, and the actions or behavioural changes that respondents were most often engaged in are those that require less effort, money or time.

Notably, the people surveyed were not from a general population – but were people who had set themselves apart by choosing to attend a screening of the movie. They were, the study notes, “more highly educated and more likely to be employed in managerial/professional occupations,” and “61.8% had donated money to ‘a local or national group that campaigns partly/wholly about climate.’” One might expect this slice of the population to be predisposed to take the movie’s message to heart, but the study makes the important points that

• The movie “attempts to convince viewers to take action to mitigate climate change using an appeal based on the need to avoid disaster. It does seem to have had some success in raising levels of concern and motivation to act immediately after seeing the film.”

…but…

• “Campaigns [that] appeal to fear as a motivator are problematic because fear can trigger denial, apathy, repression, anger and counterproductive defensive behaviours (such as buying a ‘high-carbon’ sports utility vehicle to protect oneself against an unpredictable environment) in response…”

…and therefore…

• “A sense of agency is one of the most important factors in determining whether people engage in pro-environmental behaviour. People need to believe that they can do something about the problem.”

That “sense of agency” does not appear to have been a top-of-mind outcome for the people making the movie: the study observes that “although ‘Not Stupid’ action packs containing a brief list of suggestions under the heading ‘What can I do?’ were given out at many early screenings, the film itself does not directly give information about how viewers can respond to the issues raised.”

The point of my sharing this, is that any act of communication on the subject of climate change may do well to include a “therefore, do what?” component. I need to do a lot better in this regard – because, to repurpose something I wrote a few years ago,

A person is ‘informed’ (to use the verb in its richest sense) only when the delivery of a curated slice of reality (data) is believed – and is relevant enough, and comprehensible enough, that it alters the receiver’s understanding. The person who transmits it can’t insist, ‘It’s information!’. The moment and the process of becoming information occur at the other end of the line.

Information only becomes intelligence (in the sense of an “intelligence community” such as the so-called Five Eyes) when an act of information (remember, that’s a verb) is focused into the possible actions of decision-makers. Aspiring to produce intelligence, we may begin with the collection of what we hope to deliver as data, but much of the potential value of that data must be added to the mere flows of facts. Much of the impact of intelligence depends on thoughtful presentation, and not merely delivery, of the bits.

Imparting facts, and expecting good actions to result, is not enough. To quote myself again on the way out the door: “If we’re not enabling better decisions, it’s not intelligence, and that’s why proud claims of being ‘data-driven’ ought to invite a determination not to stop there.”