Academics at Britain’s first conference on the psychology of climate change argued that the greatest obstacles to action are not technical, economic or political—they are the denial strategies that we adopt to protect ourselves from unwelcome information.
Is there a “psychology of climate change”? According to this article from The Guardian, there is.
It is true that nearly 80% of people claim to be concerned about climate change. However, delve deeper and one finds that people have a remarkable tendency to define this concern in ways that keep it as far away as possible. They describe climate change as a global problem (but not a local one) as a future problem (not one for their own lifetimes) and absolve themselves of responsibility for either causing the problem or solving it.
Most disturbing of all, 60% of people believe that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change”. Thirty per cent of people believe climate change is “largely down to natural causes”, while 7% refuse to accept the climate is changing at all.
How is it possible that so many people are still unpersuaded by 40 years of research and the consensus of every major scientific institution in the world? Surely we are now long past the point at which the evidence became overwhelming?
That’s the 64 trillion dollar/euro question, isn’t it? A preponderance of scientific research makes it abundantly clear that we face a massive problem, one that grows larger by the day, and yet the reaction—from politicians, from business leaders, and from the public—is little more than lip service, if that.
Unfortunately, the situation is made even worse when scientists fail to communicate effectively, as apparently was the result at a recently completed gathering in Copenhagen. More than 2,500 researchers from around the world met to deliver the latest findings on how human emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the environment and how that is likely to evolve over the coming century. NewScientist offers this report:
Have scientists muddied the waters over what needs to be done to stave off dangerous climate change? Have they caused confusion instead of telling politicians how to save the world? That’s what many are asking in the wake of a major meeting intended to inform politicians before vitally important negotiations later this year. . .
Some delegates worry the meeting has only created more confusion, leaving policy-makers even less clear about where to set their emissions targets. In 600 talks over three days, researchers presented a complex update on their individual work, the majority of which showed the impacts of climate change would happen faster and be worse than previously thought. The sessions appeared to satisfy the needs of scientists but not the policy-makers present.
It might be funny if it weren’t so scary.
Imagine a situation where a little girl is dangling from a branch over the edge of a cliff, perilously close to a deadly fall. Her brother runs to get help, but as he tries to explain the situation and tell what’s needed, no one can understand him. He is afraid and upset because of what he knows, yet he’s unable to effectively pass on his vital information so as to save his sister’s life.
That’s not an exact analogy, of course, but it’s not far from the mark. Scientists have been warning us for years—decades even—that the world is in great danger due to unchecked global warming. They’ve tried to tell us that something must be done, and many of them have offered solutions. But somehow the message is not getting through effectively; certainly not so that it would cause a reaction proportional to the threat.
Does the problem lie in the psychology of the listeners? Is it the fault of the presenters? Or perhaps some of both? Whatever it is, time grows shorter day by day, as glaciers melt, oceans acidify, trees die, and we sit passively by… doing nothing… waiting for the little girl to fall.
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