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What we think about when we try not to think about global warming

Global warming is the elephant in the room. Here's why so many people couldn't care less, even though we should. Read More

Elephant in the room

This is an excerpt from the book “What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming.”

The climate paradox is easily evident. The scientific data and measurements about climate change and global warming are getting stronger and stronger. It’s not that scientists are alarmists — it’s that the science itself is alarming.

Still, people in many countries seem to care less and less — particularly in wealthy petroleum-based economies such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway. Heat waves are getting more frequent, stronger superstorms and typhoons are wreaking havoc in coastal settlements, sea levels are rising, the Arctic permafrost is melting faster than expected, corals and fish are dying, and there are more floods and droughts.

The whole usual list you will find in the fact-based scientific climate information, but I prefer to cut the litany short. Politicians have said for decades that they are concerned, and that “the time for action is now.” But talk is cheap, and there has been little decisive action and even fewer results.

In short, we know more than ever about this issue, and the situation looks graver than we thought. The technological part of the transition promises to be the easiest. We have the solutions we need to fix climate change: from radical energy efficiency to renewable energy, better education for women, reforestation and carbon capture. Easy.

But the public and political will is lacking. Reason has won the public argument about climate, but so far lost the case. Even if there is widespread concern, most Westerners still choose to look away — despite the dire facts, or perhaps exactly because of them.

Some of that apathy has its roots in deliberate denial and spin, but also to our susceptibility to it in the face of danger. The facts from the climate consensus are being shape-shifted into uncertainty, irrelevance, divisive fiction, hysteria, hoax and conspiracy in the thinking of too many.

But even those who have tried to convey the alarming facts and motivate action have — often without realizing it — failed us. There is a golden rule in coaching and psychotherapeutic approaches to creating change: Our habitual solutions often become part of the problem. The standard response to difficult problems is to double our efforts. We try harder, pushing the old solution yet again. 

Being even cleverer at it, but getting more and more frustrated when the results don’t turn out differently. Some deeply ingrained solutions are hard to unlearn. The solutions pushed by many environmental organizations have become part of the problem.

This is very evident in most attempts to communicate climate science to the public. When people aren’t convinced by hearing the scientific facts of climate change, then the facts have been repeated and multiplied. Or shouted in a louder voice. Or with more pictures of drowning polar bears, still-bleaker facts, even more studies.

Still no response? Then the rule of thumb has been to try to shout louder yet. Make a hair-raising video with emotive music showing that we’re heading for the cliff. Or write the umpteenth report for widespread distribution with the new facts, unequivocal documentation and lots of graphs, scientific references and tables. Some are still surprised — or arrogantly annoyed — at all those people who just don’t get it.

On the solutions front, carbon prices have been a favorite. We must raise CO2 taxes, increase emission quota prices, and so on. In a perfect economic world with perfect markets, the Solution with capital S is no doubt to set the right global cap and then the right cost for greenhouse gas emissions. When producing industrial goods in a global world, the associated “bads” of emissions should be taxed in an efficient manner. The polluter should pay. Both politicians and voters should support the carbon tax.

However, there is no global right price that all governments can agree on across cultures and local economies, despite the economic model saying this is the ideal. Neither is there one fair model for sharing emission rights among countries. Blaming politicians for these shortcomings doesn’t bring much progress. Nor are there any institutions that can design and maintain the frameworks needed for this global top-down pricing and enforcement system to work.

Just assuming there ought to be and arguing from that assumption, as many economists have been doing, is acting like Peter Pan: believing that because we want it to happen, it should happen. Psychologists can recognize this as a form of wishful thinking, which is common not just among children, but among adults, too. But Peter Pan miracles only work in Neverland. Not here on earth.

For too long we’ve relied solely on this double push: More facts will finally convince the wayward about climate change. And there must be a global price on carbon emissions. Both are highly rational and uttered with the best of intentions, but neither is rooted in messy social reality or guided by how our brains actually think.

Don’t get me wrong. I love rationality and clarity. I give offerings at the altar of Apollo, god of reason, logic and academia. I’m not in any sense opposed to better facts, more rational communication or higher prices on emissions.

But rationality unfortunately has its limits. I wish as much as anyone concerned with the future of two-leggeds and more-than-human lives that this double push, gloriously rational as it is, would have been sufficient. Then it would already have solved our common problem. Yet it has repeatedly failed. Frustration, despair and apathy have been the psychological outcomes.

The alternative to continuing pushing what doesn’t work is: Try something else! And do more of what actually does work. There are hundreds of inspiring cases and examples out there that are already happening without waiting for a top-level climate treaty or high carbon price. There are new examples and emerging strategies. These are things that are proven to work, based on human nature as described by psychologists and other social scientists.

We can use the power of social networks and norms, frame the climate issues in more supportive metaphors that avoid emotional backfiring, make taking action simpler and more convenient, and make better use of storytelling. Signals that give feedback on our progress are vital, too.

Luckily there is no need to shift everyone in modern democracies. Typically around 40 to 60 percent of people are already concerned, and politicians in principle only need a majority to press through stronger measures. The challenge now is how to convert the felt concern into prioritizing the climate issue relative to other issues. Roughly one or two in 10 need to shift into giving greater priority to ambitious climate policies. That would create a voter majority in favor of a great swerve.

Let’s explore how we think about climate, what new things we can do and how we choose to be in the world. We (Western) humans have long understood ourselves and our economic systems as separate from the air, clouds, soils, rivers and waters. The climate crisis seems to be forcing a slowly dawning recognition that we’re intricately and intimately woven in with air, land and sea. That lungs and leaves go together.

And it’s not just on the large, societal level. Where does your own self end and where does the air or water begin? Is the air inside my lungs me? The oxygen in my blood? Is the air I exhale not me? Is the water I drink, that comes into my cells, not me? The bacteria in my gut or on my skin?

And what about the village, town or mega-city in which I live? We say, “I’m a New Yorker.” My “self” is a web of relations. As humans, we are permeable to water, air and food from the land. We’re intimately connected to earthly flows, our technologies as well as more-than-human beings in myriad ways.

My book questions whether we can continue to regard the world as out-there and separate from us, and shows how to make peace with the restless, living air.

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