By Emma Cowen
The world as we know it is undergoing an “era of global boiling”, as UN Secretary General António Guterres stated in July of this year. With the exponential rise of world temperatures leading to wildfires in the Mediterranean and droughts in the Middle East, global warming threatens the very extinction of humanity – and yet many of us draw a veil on it. Despite the wide international participation of countries in climate negotiations and conferences, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reiterates that “much more action” is needed. So why are we failing to act in the face of such imminent (and immediate) danger?
According to a Pew Research Centre poll, 75 to 80 percent of American participants ranked climate change last on their list of priorities, despite considering it as an important issue. One way to account for such a paradoxical view is to consider individuals’ feeling of relative powerlessness in the face of this far-reaching phenomena. The natural reaction to a profound fear which cannot easily be repressed, such as that induced by climate change, is to “adopt … a range of defence mechanisms". Change strategist for WWF Tom Crompton effectively suggests that these mechanisms can vary between apathy and shifting responsibility onto others, partly explaining our conscious or unconscious ignorance of the problem and our subsequent silence.
Firstly, apathy is a route chosen by several Western societies whose citizens struggle to understand how climate change could affect them on an individual level, especially because they are often less exposed to the impacts of extreme climate related events. Indeed, whilst transcending borders, the effects of global warming are disproportionately distributed around the world, with least developed countries usually hit hardest. Similarly, greenhouse gases, the main causes of climate change, are invisible and do not have direct health implications, prompting individuals to act even more in ignorance. Further, personal disavowal regarding the current state of the climate can be translated by mistakes we may make: confusing weather and climate is a prominent one, with a relatively cool 2008 in the United States dropping Americans’ concerns for climate change.
Our relative lack of knowledge around climate change can foster scepticism and denial, demonstrated by the relative constancy of public uncertainty in the United Kingdom since 2003. Mass media may be at the heart of this uncertainty, with citizens heavily relying on secondary sources of information rather than scientific evidence. People find themselves confronted with heaps of information that may not always provide an accurate representation of the world around us but can provoke a strong emotional reaction. These intermediary sources can therefore hinder the public’s desire to act in favour of the climate, not only by stirring anxiety, but also by presenting reassuring images of the future through the “panacea” that technological innovation for instance represents.
Secondly, carrying the heavy burden of anthropogenic global warming makes resorting to shifting the blame onto other actors appealing. In particular, the historical responsibility for climate change is attributed to the first industrialised nations - and yet they strategically wield ignorance. As Jana Bacevic claims, they postpone decisions until only one course of action presents itself as “inevitable”, a process she calls fatalistic liberalism. In this way, the blame can be placed on other actors, which many states do to maintain the status quo. A cycle of responsibility thus forms: individuals can hold governments accountable for their inaction and the latter can blame transnational firms for their greenhouse gas emissions (and so on), delaying the implementation of climate change policies.
With the feeling of powerlessness comes the reluctance to act in favour of a greener future. Many actors in Western and westernised countries are governed by self-interest; by choosing not to immediately address global warming, they can continue to bask in their own comfort without suffering from climate anxiety or from the deep structural change that is needed. The required difficulty of changing entrenched lifestyles that contribute to global warming is arguably one of the main challenges to solving climate change, “requiring certain short-term loss in order to mitigate against an uncertain longer-term loss” as George Marshall wrote in his book Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. In this sense, interests guide powerful actors in securing their capital, despite their harmful impacts on the climate, best depicted by fossil industries pursuing their polluting activities. By employing tobacco industries’ tactics such as convincing consumers to buy a product detrimental to their health, ExxonMobil managed to manufacture uncertainty on the science around climate change. After insisting on technological innovation in its advertising, it sought to appear as if confronting the adversities of global warming.
Our perceived helplessness can also lead us to undertake what some would call ‘rational’ behaviours such as the ‘free rider’ approach. Actors effectively avoid the costs of an action such as in this case conforming to climate policies, whilst simultaneously reaping the benefits of others’ efforts. Countries could thus benefit from stable temperatures through others’ attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change, without having to bear the costs of developing climate policies. This free rider mentality is particularly prevalent on the international scene, where leading powers opted out of climate agreements, with notably the United States refusing to ratify the 1995 Kyoto Protocol and withdrawing from the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement in 2017. With countries boasting high rates of greenhouse gas emissions adopting this behaviour, such negotiations therefore lose their effectiveness, especially due to the lack of global governance enforcing rules and sanctions.
Solving the climate issue therefore relies on us (after all, global warming is anthropogenic). As terrifying as it may sound, it is necessary if we wish to continue living on Earth. All the previous reasons for climate inaction are mostly excuses, ways to set back the impending doom of a catastrophe. We should aim to use the devastating climate related events as a form of motivation to combat climate change and injustice, without fuelling an excessive amount of fear and anxiety. No matter which actors are most responsible, climate change is an issue that humanity can act upon, as it has done before with previous issues, in the form of a collective effort, because humans are “wired to take action”. Pressure on corporations and governments is evidently needed to enforce and regulate the right policies and shape individuals’ behaviours on a global scale - but most importantly, the belief that this problem is solvable will lead to profound structural and environmental change.
Bibliography
Climate change may be real, but it’s still not easy being green, Alice Fishburn, The Sunday Times, 2023. Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/climate-change-may-be-real-but-its-still-not-easy-being-green-cdnwc7nh3z6
Public understanding of climate change in the United States, Weber, E. U., & Stern, P. C. American Psychologist, 2011. Available at: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2011-09485-007.pdf?auth_token=8b7440150ebaf4fe5c701d85c7155da6c5a10182&returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fpsycnet.apa.org%2Frecord%2F2011-09485-007
Why We Don’t Act, Jana Bacevic: forum response to Uncertainty, Sheila Jasanoff, Boston Review Forum, 2021. Available at: https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/why-we-dont-act/
Communicating climate change: history, challenges, process and future directions, Susanne Moser, WIREs Climate Change, Volume 1 Issue 1, 2009. Available at: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/wcc.403?saml_referrer
Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, George Marshall, 2014. Available at: https://climateconviction.org/downloads/Chapter_41_Why_we_are_wired_to_Ignore_CC.pdf
Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil’s climate change communications, G Supran, N Oreskes, One Earth, 2021, cell.com. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332221002335