As is often the case, there’s a smart summary of the idea at Grist:
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-23-behavior-change-causes-changes-in-beliefs-not-vice-versa
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-16-changing-energy-behavior-it-aint-easy
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-12-02-smart-readers-weigh-in-on-behavior-change

So a lot of it may have nothing to do with the dynamics of the public sphere or with people’s distrust of experts — it may have to do with the irrelevance of any public discourse.

And by the way — it points to a possible role of another of your pet interests, Tim: games. Games let people try on behaviors without requiring them to challenge their own values. There’s a lot of talk these days about harnessing the power of games for the good of the world, but so far it hasn’t really taken off. I went to the recent Games for Change conference, and I saw a lot of people trying to shoehorn good intentions into first-person shooters.

Also, I’ve met Schellenberger and encountered some of his hired blog-commenters. He’s carved out a nice contrarian lecture-circuit schtick but his ultimate message seems pretty shallow to me — especially considering that there’s no more actual support for his “moonshot” spending levels on green issues than there is for carbon capping.

I think a more interesting take on the failure of environmentalists would be an analysis of what we call the “inside strategy” of the past couple of decades (lobbying and legislative focus) along with green consumerism and its apparent failure. Greens were seduced the idea of being allowed to sit at the grown-up table while not actually achieving anything like the kind of shift that’s required. In contrast, “outside strategy” protest is often thought to be ineffectual but might actually be key:

http://www.grist.org/article/where-does-our-power-originate

I think that the class does start with that implicit understanding, perhaps most predominantly because I think that’s where most of my students are going to start and where the field of environmental studies starts: with the assumption that the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is fundamentally correct and that the failure to date to adopt an ambitious policy agenda to deal with the phenomenon is one of the most urgent contemporary political issues. A common trope among politically active Swarthmore students (and maybe faculty) when they come up against what they take to be a self-evident truth which does not meet with widespread popular or political support is that the main solution is to further educate the public about the truth. I suppose one of the things I want the students to consider from several angles is whether that initial assumption is itself one of the problems here (a question that narratives 2, 3, and 4 all take up in some fashion).

There does seem to be an implicit understanding in these categories that you’re looking at not the climate-change debate per se, but at roots of resistance to the climate-change narrative. While I’m sympathetic to the assumption here, it’s also worth noting that resistance differs (both in population and argument) depending on the nature of the climate change narrative being put forth; different models of causality produce resistance from different economic and cultural sectors.