Check Your Head

The climate change conference at Copenhagen begins in just a few days. Delegates from countries all over the world will be gathering to discuss the next steps of global climate mitigation and adaption targets to be put in place for 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol will expire.

In just the last few weeks, there has been a lot of activity. A number of industrialized nations have put forth more aggressive emission reduction targets for the 2020 and 2050 marks, as has South Korea.  The US and China met to discuss far reaching collaborative initiatives addressing energy efficiency and clean technology development, and both governments soon after moved to present domestic goals – the US with emission reductions somewhere in the range of 17% – 20% of 2005 levels by 2020, and China with 40% – 45% reductions in carbon intensity (ratio of emissions to GDP) by around the same period.

These events are not inconsequential, but still much of the coverage on climate change related issues has returned to the hum of uncertainties and disagreement put forth by climate deniers. Why is it that we are still debating the science? How can it be that we continually fail to conceptualize the gravity of what climate change implies for the planet and the life that resides upon it? How come more and more people are now doubting the science? What we know is not just based on model projections, but also careful observations over significantly long time intervals.

Perhaps climate change denial and avoidance is just in our heads.

There is an element of human psychology to the whole climate change debate that is consistently overlooked. The breadth and scope of climate change (its indelible interconnectedness throughout Earth’s systems – both natural and man-made – have broad effects and feedback cycles) make it a vastly complicated dilemma to conceptually work through, even if you have a PhD in geophysics or climate science. There is so much to wrap the mind around, and more often than not, the information that is being processed holds unquestionably negative future consequences and outcomes for us in some form or another. The human mind is pretty good at blocking that stuff out; we’ve had thousands of years experience coping with the worst that life can dish to us. Our resilience is impressive, but it can also be damning, especially if we have a self-interest in the status quo.

Source: Gary Larsen, The Far Side

Owning up to our individual and collective stakes in the equation is incredibly difficult. There is so much to account for, so many factors and variables – how do we measure our own respective and individual responsibility? Why should we do something if so many others are not and we are not absolutely sure about all the details? These are natural responses that we tend to ask ourselves at all phases of interaction, from personal decision-making to transnational negotiations. It is simply more convenient for our psyche to disconnect. Collectively, it is a tragedy of the commons that we write off our own connection to the problem as negligible and permissable (read more about the psychology of climate change communication here).

That may be why it is easy for the public to sway back and forth on the issue. Information that penetrates through mass media today frequently pertains to the “debate surrounding the science” (both real and perceived) and whether there is true consensus on what we know about climate change. The message and content is easily manipulated and hijacked because it is so richly complex. The recent email hacking debacle from the University of East Anglia in England being cast by climate change deniers as damning evidence of malicious intent by scientists to distort climate knowledge to their own gains is a prime example of this folly. Not to assume that most people are swayed toward uncertainty with such headlines, but it may partially explain why decreasing numbers of people believe that global warming and a changing global climate system is indeed something to be concerned about, much less believe in.

It is the human illusion of a separate reality decoupled from the planet’s environmental jurisdiction that is a farce. In other words, denial of the greater issue before us is manufactured in our heads. The reality of the situation (as consensus clearly defines) is that climate change is happening and accelerating (and considerably faster than anticipated). Our debates should be about how fast we do a wide array of things to address it, not whether there is even something that requires our doing. The basis for that truth is rooted in evidence derived from disciplined and peer reviewed methods of repeated observation, testing, and analysis – not opinion. It is worth noting that methodical scientific approaches (like those being taken by the many thousands of scientists around the world who are addressing climate change in their respective fields) have allowed for virtually all the advances of modern life that we currently enjoy.

But even if for whatever reason one still does not believe in anthropogenic climate change, let us pretend just for a minute that it wasn’t a factor. It is still almost certain that the world’s population will continue to grow toward upwards of 9 billion plus people by 2050. These people (along with the 1.4 billion people currently living in extreme poverty) will all aspire to a greater quality of life which means greater energy use and more resources to meet their demands. The natural resources required to meet our current demands are already being exploited to exhaustion across the globe. The richness of our natural systems, the basis for our entire existence of “capital” (see ecosystem services), are decaying at an alarmingly rapid rate – something that has only happened but a handful of other times in the entire history of life on this planet.

Yes, there is debate amongst scientists who study the Earth’s climate systems, without debates and questions it would be an unhealthy science. It is also true that the policy responses to climate change are based on future projections with what can be very large error margins – but that is something we cannot do anything about. It would be nice to test out our hypotheses in advance, but unfortunately in the case of climate science waiting for the results may mean our fate is then sealed, if it isn’t already. That in mind, all of the fundamental attributes of what we are both observing and projecting with regard to climate change come from a cadre of scientific disciplines that are grounded in the laws of biology, chemistry and physics, and those are laws with a far greater scope of planetary governance than economics and political science.

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.”

—Albert Einstein

Together, most of us, and indeed the bulk of humanity, need to take a hard collective look in the mirror. Our very brightest and best-trained thinkers from across the world are giving us grim news. They are warning us that the planet’s life vitals are in very bad shape, and that a failure to convert our understanding of these signals into aggressive corrective actions, will only make them much worse. The noise coming from those who deny these signals is just that, denial. And denial can be an incredibly unhealthy enterprise.

Taking that all into consideration, we also have the intellectual and technical expertise to do what needs to be done to reverse many of these trends. Humans have evolved to plan for the future, and have been actively doing so for thousands of years (see agricultural revolution). That is the good news. So, instead of shutting out this unpleasant reality, the real debate must be about how we channel that same ingrained human resilience into something positive.

Beyond whatever political leaders decide on (or not) at Copenhagen this time around, let us all set some reasonable short-term goals. That is what a psychologist would likely say (read more about the connections between psychology and climate change). Take control of the situation by first managing what is immediate and attainable before you, make gains, reassess, and repeat. Keep setting the bar increasingly higher and higher. Have reasonable and achievable goals in the short-term, but maintain and continually strengthen a grand vision for the close horizon.

All of us are capable of that. We set goals and timelines for almost everything. Take some time to make it a part of what you do and who you are. One. Step. At. A. Time. Own up to it. Denial is for addicts.

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