Global warming a tough sell for the human psyche

It's hard for me to really understand this, because I am future-oriented. And having a mathematical orientation, I understand how small things can add up to something big.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091217/ap_on_re_us/us_climate_psychology;_ylt=AoTNKOApPKYhHNRflyIxGWSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlcTYycTZvBHBvcwMxMTYEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9zY2llbmNlBHNsawNnbG9iYWx3YXJtaW4-

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer – 1 hr 41 mins ago

NEW YORK – The Copenhagen talks on climate change were convened with a sense of urgency that many ordinary folks don't share. Why is that? One big reason: It's hard for people to get excited about a threat that seems far away in space and time, psychologists say.

"It's not in people's faces," said psychologist Robert Gifford of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. "It is in the media, but not in their everyday experience. That's quite a different thing."

The consequences of global warming are seen as occurring in far-off places, he said: "It's happening up in the Arctic or it's happening in Bangladesh, and it's not happening in my backyard." And the slow changes are not as attention-grabbing as a "fast disaster" like an earthquake, he said.

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Gifford said people tend to attach less importance to future problems than more immediate concerns. That may be a holdover from early days of human evolution, when "things far away didn't matter, things in the future didn't matter. It was whether the tiger or the enemy was just around the corner," he said.

In fact, scientists say global warming's influence is already visible and it could get worse within decades if no action is taken. The average number of heat-wave deaths in Chicago could more than double by 2050, and killer heat waves in Europe could also increase by that time, experts say. Arctic summers may be almost free of sea ice by 2030 or sooner, they say.

Even among people who accept global warming as a serious issue, there are additional psychological barriers to getting them to take significant action against it. Gifford, who studies pro-environmental behavior, calls them the 13 dragons.

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