Why climate change is perfectly designed to be ignored

Our brains are wired to disregard distant threats, climate activist and author George Marshall argues

By Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun September 5, 2014

Climate change modelling describes a terrifying future of expanding deserts, extreme weather events, rising sea levels and widespread human misery. Yet few of us are terrified, at least, we aren’t acting terrified.

Despite a global scientific consensus that climate change is not only real, but already affecting weather, crops and the makeup of the air that we breathe, many people remain skeptical or even believe the opposite.

Climate activist George Marshall wondered why and sought answers from Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, conservative deniers (including Tea Party stalwarts), risk assessment experts and environmentalists. What he learned will not fill you with hope.

Distant threat doesn’t concern us

“In order to survive in this world human beings have to be really good at paying attention to certain things and ignoring others,” Marshall said. “Climate change is perfectly designed to be ignored. It is uncertain, it is set in a distant future and it’s not clear where it’s happening.”

Because today’s weather is subject to natural variability, scientists take a long view of the expected impacts of climate change, setting them in the future by at least a generation or two. Even though the evidence suggests that climate change is affecting us today ­— and has been for 50 years — the threat is seldom framed that way, he said.

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No clearly defined enemy

“The big problem with climate change is the enemy is us,” said Marshall. “We are the cause of it.”

Worse, we are culpable in the way we wash our dishes, cook our food, get to work and heat our homes.

“When we perceive that someone has the intention to harm us we respond to that very quickly, but climate change has no intention to harm us and in fact it stems from the things we do to care for the people we love, with just living our lives,” he said.

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The consequences are weakly defined

“We still talk about climate change as uncertain when the evidence is pretty strong,” he said. “The way we shape this story is quite deliberately designed to destroy its chances of alerting our sense of the threat.”

The media have approached this story as a “balanced debate” seeking out skeptics and opposing viewpoints, which gives people permission to essentially ignore the evidence. Science communicates in a way that is entirely dispassionate, which fails to strike the necessary fear in our hearts.

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Raising the alarm over climate change has largely been the province of the political left and the environmental movement, which has used it as an indictment of corporatism and industrial growth.

“On the other side, people who are politically conservative think that means they shouldn’t believe in climate change,” said Marshall. “That’s a dangerous situation. Climate change threatens everything that (conservatives) hold dear, but the issue has become identified with the liberal left and nothing in their narrative speaks to conservative values.”

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That fits my own observation. I rarely if ever see those who profess concern for the environment taking steps to limit their own contribution to the problem. When I was in a discussion group at my church that was into criticizing big business for environmental problems, if I tried to discuss what we should do in our personal lives to use less energy, I was brushed aside. When a newcomer asked about giving a presentation about doing this, she was told flat out that the group wouldn't be interested in that.

I see people who profess concern about the environment keeping their house temps cold in the winter. I see them idling their engines instead of turning them off when stopped for awhile. I see them leaving the water running while brushing their teeth & washing dishes. I see them leaving all the lights in their house on.

People are too lazy even to turn their computers off when they aren't using them. It doesn't even occur to people to try to carpool to meetings.