Why Sustained Climate Change Mitigation Doesn’t Stand a Chance: A Conspiracy of Natural and Psychological Forces
Almost 90% of Americans are avoiding climate change activism.
Recent research shows that at least 40% of Americans are concerned or even alarmed about global warming, But only 13% say they have called their elected officials or joined an activist group. One question on many minds is, despite saying they are alarmed and concerned, why aren’t the other 87% of Americans demanding policy changes that would curb greenhouse gases?
Apathy
It is easy to attribute climate activism avoidance to apathy. By definition, apathy is indifference, lack of interest, concern, or enthusiasm. That would seem to explain it. Yet the same survey, done by YPCC shows that 29% say they are indeed concerned about global warming. If they are concerned then that would mean that they shouldn’t be apathetic. Maybe they are concerned and they behave as if they are apathetic because something else is going on.
Per Espen Stoknes, in his book, What We Think About When we try not to Think About Global Warming, says that a lot of people are depressed about climate destabilization and environmental damage. Apathy can be one symptom of depression and maybe people are concerned and alarmed but depressed about it and therefore act apathetic.
The Bystander Effect
Another well-known phenomenon in psychology describes the diffusion of responsibility that occurs with large groups of people, called “the bystander effect”. The theory goes, when something bad happens, the larger the number of people that are present, the less likely an individual is to take action in an emergency.
In the bystander effect scenario, we could be bystanders to the slow heating of the earth’s atmosphere and systematic climate destabilization, but most of us assume someone else will surely take care of it. After all, the Chinese are still building coal-burning power plants. And if we do take action many of us believe we have little power to have an impact. The logic goes, others who do have more responsibility than us will surely take action. In this way, the majority of concerned and alarmed Americans stand by and assume someone else will take action.
Carbon Addiction
There is a third and more nefarious reason that concerned and alarmed Americans might not be taking action. And this reason is not something very many people are talking about. And the reason is that admitting it might reflect poorly on our morals. This third possible reason is that we are “carbon-addicts” and we are afraid that taking action might result in changing our lifestyles and identities.
How can we possibly become climate activists when we know, deep down inside, that it will threaten our supersized American consumption and the affluence of our resource-rich lifestyles? Will it threaten our personal attractiveness, our commodity culture, driving SUVs, flying around the world regularly, enjoying our carnivorous eating habits, shopping sprees, plentiful water, and unlimited energy that we have worked so hard to enjoy ? Especially when our egos and identities are built on those markers of our success?
In short — we can’t. So we create plausible deniability. It’s much easier to ignore it, to be skeptical, to not have time, and to find excuses instead of taking action. Climate activist avoidance is driven by all three of these reasons. But that’s not all.
Dynamic Conservatism
Did you ever notice how slow big institutions and corporations are to change? In the 1970’s MIT professor Donald Schon coined the term “dynamic conservatism” to describe how organizations inherently fight to avoid change. Dynamic conservatism in our government and society is reinforced by a marketplace that saturates our habitual lifestyles with our preoccupation with cars, consumption, meat-based diets, development, and all of the things that lead to more carbon in the atmosphere.
When political contributions and subsidies are added to the equation, the deck is stacked in favor of continued fossil fuel production and pollution. Schon suggested that learning, reflection, and perceptual change is needed to overcome dynamic conservatism. But the U.S. shows no signs of becoming a learning-oriented society now or any time in the future.
Sustained Leadership
Even if the vast majority of Americans became alarmed about climate change and realized they are like the frog in a beaker of water slowly heating up on a hot plate, our government leaders are heavily influenced by fossil fuel companies and big money. According to Forbes, we spend more on fossil fuel subsidies ($5.2 trillion a year) than we do on education. We don’t have the “sustained leadership” to make courageous changes in energy policy.
Sure, there are bright spots with some Green New Deal advocates and states taking the lead on renewables, local food production, planting trees, saving energy, and other fronts. We have students holding climate strikes and threatening to vote green in a few years.
But even if the next presidential administration and all of the countries around the world were to immediately take action on decarbonization, it would only be temporary until the next pro-fossil fuel oriented leaders come into power and reverse those changes. We are kidding ourselves to think that the green sea change is stable and consistent enough to actually result in a sustained period of enormous policy changes that would lead to significant decarbonization.
So no matter how encouraging the pockets of increasing climate awareness look, the reality is that our leaders and most of us will continue to be addicted to the idea of free or relatively cheap carbon-dumping in the atmosphere, regardless of the planetary consequences.
Should we give up on climate action? Absolutely not. Even though serious climate change mitigation may be impossible, anything we can do to decarbonize and avoid a runaway greenhouse effect depicted by the most hellish IPCC scenarios is a step in the right direction.
We can turn around apathy by promoting the opportunity for a prosperous green economy, our improved health, plentiful food, water, and military security. We can model civic responsibility, coach and cajole people to upend the bystander effect in order to inspire bystanders to pitch in. We can strive for and promote a learning society and attempt to elect leaders who will fight to reduce carbon in the air.
But it’s a much harder, maybe impossible sell to convince someone living in relative affluence and slack, who has a mindset rooted in hard work, prosperity, and entitled consumption that they need to actively fight the institutions that made their lifestyle possible, rather than enjoy what they think they so richly deserve.
