The World's a Mess but I'm Busy.

Here among team climate, there is a long-standing shared priority/joke/frustration: how do we get people to connect their short-term actions with long-term ramifications?  Why is this such a hard thing to understand?  Is it denial? Do people genuinely believe that there is no cause for alarm?  Is it belief overshadowed by the feeling of insignificance, being overwhelmed by the immensity of climate change and feeling that nothing we do will make a difference?  Is it because people feel there are other, more pressing issues to address first?  Is it that we just don’t give a sh*t?

The throwaway society depicted by Life Magazine in 1955 heralded single use products and the “liberation of the American housewife”.   This only fueled the fire of consumerism, and propelled us down a path of resource depletion and a sense of entitlement for whatever the Earth may provide.

It seems that lately concern for environmental issues has been on the decline.  A recent GreenBiz article explains why we’re tuned out to environmental crises.   GlobeScan’s environmental polling points to the severe economic strife over the past several years: “The full ramifications of the banking collapses, ensuing government bailouts and cripplingly high levels of public indebtedness that have resulted have only slowly become apparent. And bluntly, for many citizens, these appear to pose a much clearer and more present threat to their well-being than environmental jeopardy, which for most people remains hidden from view.”  Barely half of those polled considered climate change a “very serious problem”.   The article also highlights the challenges with misinformation and contradictions: the oil shortage coinciding with the shale boom, species loss being widely exaggerated, and faulty figures on glacier melt in the Himalayas issued by the IPCC, which is supposed to be the expert on such things. 

In another article exploring denial as a barrier to sustainable change, the author talks about meeting with chief executives in the U.K. to discuss sustainability.  From one executive he got this reaction: “…in the current difficult economic climate we are unable to talk about sustainability issues in the public domain because shareholders would view it as us taking our eye off the ball of short term profits growth.”  Yikes. 

He concludes with a bit of positivity, looking at an inter-disciplinary approach to the problem, including neuroscience, positive psychology and Buddhism.  His interview with Thich Nhat Hanh revealed some harsh reality coupled with optimism:  "When they see the truth it is too late to act ... but they don't want to wake up because it may make them suffer; they cannot confront the truth. It is not that they don't know what is going to happen. They just don't want to think about it.  They want to get busy in order to forget. We should not talk in terms of what they should do, what they should not do, for the sake of the future. We should talk to them in such a way that touches their hearts, which helps them to engage on the path that will bring them true happiness, the path of love and understanding, the courage to let go. When they have tasted a little bit of peace and love, they may wake up."

Then there are the challenges of false optimism and the psychology of climate change denial.  We must understand why it’s important to not gloss over the issues, and enable people to sit with the difficult reality of a changing world.  True, Pacific Islands that will be underwater in a decade are distant and abstract to most of us; does this change when we start to see the effects of climate change in our own back yard?  One would think so; alas, this isn’t always the case.  Nic Marks, creator of the Happy Planet Index, helps outline the issues: "What we now see is climate change skepticism increasing as the science base increases, so what's happening is people are mentally fleeing the problem because they're frightened. It's too difficult; it's too big to deal with, so they'd rather believe it doesn't exist and that scientists have got it wrong.”

So where do we go from here?  Do we paint a rosy picture, to give people hope for the future and the feeling that “every CFL counts”?  Do we continue with doom and gloom?  Or do we just stick our head in the sand, and ignore the oncoming freight train?  I’m hoping we can get our collective sh*t together and quit being so apathetic.