What it is
Johann Hari's 2022 investigation into the global attention crisis examines twelve causes of declining focus, from social media design to sleep deprivation to environmental pollution. While not a climate book, it directly addresses why people struggle to engage with long-term environmental challenges in an economy designed to capture and monetize attention.
Why we picked this
The green transition requires sustained public attention and long-term thinking. Hari explains why both are under attack. This book is essential context for understanding why climate communication often fails and why the attention economy is itself an environmental issue.
Key takeaways
- The average American's attention span on a single screen has declined from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2020, according to research cited by Hari.
- Social media algorithms optimize for engagement (often outrage), systematically deprioritizing the kind of slow, complex, solutions-focused content that climate communication requires.
- Hari connects pollution, poor diet, and sleep deprivation to cognitive decline, suggesting that environmental degradation directly undermines our capacity to address environmental degradation.