Climate Denial
I was listening to the Guardian’s Weekly Science Podcast this morning in gym – Tuesdays have evolved into listening to podcasts with Science names – and a question was raised about why so many people are in denial about global climate change. The answer that came forth was highly unsatisfactory, it reduced down to an existential people are that way, but the question gave rise to some consideration on my part.
I have observed over the years that people are somewhat tolerant of change that they impose on themselves, and rather less tolerant of change imposed from without. I have also noted that there are two modes in which external change is fairly readily adopted: when the adopter can rationalize the change as of self origin; and when they can become fanatical about the change. The latter manifests in the behavior of folks like quitted smokers and the born-again religious. The term fanatics is striking appropriate to these people and hence to what occurs.
At root however, I have come to the hypothesis that humans have to have a feeling of rightness to be comfortable with their existence. As a result they tend to be highly resistant of any inclination that they are not right in their behavior, their lives, …. So if you tell someone that they are not right about something, they will feel threatened at the core of their being and respond negatively.
This probably explains why so many scientists are so moody because they live in an environment where they are continually proven to not be right and are continually searching for that right.
The thing with global climate change however, is that if it is caused by human activity then the message is that humans have done things that are wrong. [1] Hence, I suspect, the denial. And as much as I hate to say seemingly nice things about politicians, and this really isn’t very nice, organizations almost never care about human feelings and behavior – only when the survival of the organization is at risk, but politicians who are dependent on the votes of humans do, and this is probably why the politicians are doing everything they can not to admit that humans likely are at fault here. Of course, by doing this they prolong the denial and assure that any solution, if it hasn’t already slipped away will be harder and longer to achieve.
1. I am told by educators that they never tell students they are “wrong”, just not right enough. This practice strikes me as ill preparing those young folks for dealing with those of us who don’t have this political correctness and use the “w” word.
