Read Online Don't Even Think About It by George Marshall - Free Book Online
Authors: George Marshall
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weather-related disasters I found that their understanding of the event was mediated through the cues contained in shared stories. They were entirely capable of ignoring the role of climate change because it did not fit with the stories they chose to tell.
I also found that our desire to conform leads us to exaggerate the differences between ourselves and people in other social groups. If an attitude toward climate change becomes strongly associated with a group that we actively distrust, then the science can become “polluted” by this conflict. I suggested that campaigners for and against action on climate change were equally bound by this mechanism, and even used the same language and metaphors when describing the other side.
It is already clear that the way we relate to climate change cannot be readily condensed into a simple formula of cause and effect. Our views are constantly being shaped through the negotiation between our own identity, our group loyalty, and our relationship with wider society. We are active participants, at every stage, influencing those around us as much as we are influenced by them.
The best metaphor I can find for this lies in the way that climate scientists chart the flows within the global energy and carbon systems. In their models each part of the flow is interlinked with the other parts, such that a change in one part may spread and then amplify its impacts through what scientists call positive feedbacks. There are many such social feedbacks operating in our attitudes to climate change—such as the bystander effect or false consensus effect—that exaggerate small differences and widen the divides between people.
But this can only be a partial answer to the question of why we find it so hard to act. Those who passionately accept or passionately deny climate change have one key thing in common: They all regard it as a major threat that they need to mobilize around. But, in between these two conflicting groups, the vast majority of people find it hard to accept the importance of this issue at all. When asked, they will happily tell pollsters that they are concerned about this issue, but, as I will show, they give it little other consideration and rarely if ever talk about it.
So this returns us to the original question: Is there something innate in this issue that enables people to disregard it in this way? How else would it be possible for people to know that climate change is a threat but not feel that it is a threat?
10
The Two Brains
Why We Are So Poorly Evolved to Deal with Climate Change
The idea that our evolutionary psychology makes it hard for us to deal with climate change is widespread. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall in the coda to his book The Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins reflects that “we are notably bad at assessing risk. Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains.” This, he says, is why we can ignore climate change and think that we won’t have to face its consequences. Professor Paul Ehrlich, the outspoken population biologist at Stanford University, argues that we cannot deal with climate change because “the forces of genetic and cultural selection were not creating brains capable of looking generations ahead.”
Evolutionary psychology is much contested, debated, and fought over on political and ideological grounds. Climate deniers argue that it underestimates the speed of evolution and that constant environmental and climate changes during evolutionary history have actually left us remarkably well adapted and prepared for the changes of the modern world.
Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, disagrees. He tells me that climate change is “a threat that our evolved brains are uniquely unsuited to do a damned thing about.” Gilbert has given this some thought: He is an expert, and now a bestselling author, on the psychology of happiness, and he has the kind of free-roving
I also found that our desire to conform leads us to exaggerate the differences between ourselves and people in other social groups. If an attitude toward climate change becomes strongly associated with a group that we actively distrust, then the science can become “polluted” by this conflict. I suggested that campaigners for and against action on climate change were equally bound by this mechanism, and even used the same language and metaphors when describing the other side.
It is already clear that the way we relate to climate change cannot be readily condensed into a simple formula of cause and effect. Our views are constantly being shaped through the negotiation between our own identity, our group loyalty, and our relationship with wider society. We are active participants, at every stage, influencing those around us as much as we are influenced by them.
The best metaphor I can find for this lies in the way that climate scientists chart the flows within the global energy and carbon systems. In their models each part of the flow is interlinked with the other parts, such that a change in one part may spread and then amplify its impacts through what scientists call positive feedbacks. There are many such social feedbacks operating in our attitudes to climate change—such as the bystander effect or false consensus effect—that exaggerate small differences and widen the divides between people.
But this can only be a partial answer to the question of why we find it so hard to act. Those who passionately accept or passionately deny climate change have one key thing in common: They all regard it as a major threat that they need to mobilize around. But, in between these two conflicting groups, the vast majority of people find it hard to accept the importance of this issue at all. When asked, they will happily tell pollsters that they are concerned about this issue, but, as I will show, they give it little other consideration and rarely if ever talk about it.
So this returns us to the original question: Is there something innate in this issue that enables people to disregard it in this way? How else would it be possible for people to know that climate change is a threat but not feel that it is a threat?
10
The Two Brains
Why We Are So Poorly Evolved to Deal with Climate Change
The idea that our evolutionary psychology makes it hard for us to deal with climate change is widespread. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall in the coda to his book The Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins reflects that “we are notably bad at assessing risk. Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains.” This, he says, is why we can ignore climate change and think that we won’t have to face its consequences. Professor Paul Ehrlich, the outspoken population biologist at Stanford University, argues that we cannot deal with climate change because “the forces of genetic and cultural selection were not creating brains capable of looking generations ahead.”
Evolutionary psychology is much contested, debated, and fought over on political and ideological grounds. Climate deniers argue that it underestimates the speed of evolution and that constant environmental and climate changes during evolutionary history have actually left us remarkably well adapted and prepared for the changes of the modern world.
Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, disagrees. He tells me that climate change is “a threat that our evolved brains are uniquely unsuited to do a damned thing about.” Gilbert has given this some thought: He is an expert, and now a bestselling author, on the psychology of happiness, and he has the kind of free-roving
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