The scientific community must be in total agreement that the earth’s climate is changing and that this represents a huge threat to the planet and to us but surprisingly, public opinion still lags behind this scientific conclusion. In a recent survey, done in March in Pew, the American research center think tank organization based in Washington concluded that only 69% of the people accept that the earth is warming and only 1 in 4 Americans see global warming as a major threat.
But just knowing global warming exists, doesn’t solve the problem. The question remains, why aren’t we doing anything about it? Various psychologists debate and answer as to why this is yet to translate into any meaningful action.
Renee Lertzman, an eminent American psychiatrist explains, “The kind of threat that climate change poses to humans, both psychologically and socially is unimaginable. We face a number of mental barriers and issues that prevent us from confronting the threat.”
Daniel Gilbert,a professor of psychology at Harvard, writes about the same issue. He says that our inability to deal with climate change is due to the way our mind is wired. Gilbert describes four key reasons ranging from the fact that global warming doesn’t take a human form, making it difficult for us to think of global warming as an enemy, which then leads to a failure to accurately perceive its effects.
Robert Gifford, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the University of Victoria in Canada, also picks up on the point about our brain’s difficulty in grasping climate change as a threat. Gifford refers to this and other psychological barriers to mitigating climate change as “dragons of inaction.” “There are many barriers but if I had to name one, I would nominate the lack of perceived behavioural control in us humans”, he added.
Yet there are those who understand its threat but make little effort to cut it down, other than feeling apathetic for it. “Our apparent apathy is just a defense mechanism in the face of this psychic pain. Most of us are reluctant to accept that something we love so much is now bound up with such unimaginable devastation, talks Lertzman, explaining the psychology of such people.
The above done psychoanalysis therefore helps in understanding the loopholes in tackling climate change, so we do not spend another decade in trying to figure out why we did not react when we should have.
Photo from Woodgatesview.
