The Psychology of Climate Change

Geoffrey Beattie, Laura McGuire

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138484511
• eBook ISBN: 9781351051804
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

What explains our attitudes towards the environment? Why do so many climate change initiatives fail? How can we do more to prevent humans damaging the environment?

The Psychology of Climate Change explores the evidence for our changing environment, and suggests that there are significant cognitive biases in how we think about, and act on climate change. The authors examine how organisations have attempted to mobilise the public in the fight against climate change, but these initiatives have often failed due to the public's unwillingness to adapt their behaviour. The book also explores why some people deny climate change altogether, and the influence that these climate change deniers can have on global action to mitigate further damage.

By analysing our attitudes to the environment, The Psychology of Climate Change argues that we must think differently about climate change to protect our planet, as a matter of great urgency.

1

Introduction

The man on the bus and the science of climate change

A bus journey in the snow

Conversations with strangers on buses are often rather difficult. We all know that. It was probably the open notebook that attracted his attention. He kept glancing over at it, surreptitiously at first, and then with longer glances as if he wanted to be seen. The pure white page of the notebook had just two words on it. ‘CLIMATE CHANGE!’ in big bold pencil. He tutted on his third glance at the page and then started to speak abruptly. ‘Well, that’s bloody nonsense for a start,’ he said. He pointed to the snow on the street. It was only a fine dusting, but it was enough. ‘So that’s global warming for you,’ he said and looked at one of the authors to join him in some communal condemnation of this great hoax. He said it again, louder this time, and glanced around for support. He was starting to attract an audience; a number of our neighbours on the bus were nodding along to his comments, but he then turned back to the one nearest to him, the one crammed into the seat beside him, the one who couldn’t move.

Perhaps he had been encouraged by the exclamation mark; perhaps that’s what was responsible for the conversation in the first place. ‘What a joke,’ he continued. ‘You don’t believe in that rubbish, do you?’ His look was accusatory, it demanded an answer. But what was the point in replying?

It seems that climate change, like politics, religion and death, has entered the domain of topics that are not discussed in polite conversation. There is just too much disagreement (not violent disagreement, of course, at least not yet, but still very heated and messy) linked to personal values, different ideologies, even religious views that cannot be bridged by polite words (although we will try in this book). It wouldn’t have felt right talking about the difference between the weather and the climate to that man on the bus, or even trying to empathise with the fact that ‘global warming’ can be a highly misleading term for many. Some have suggested ‘climate chaos’ as a better descriptor of what is happening and what will happen more and more in the future. The concept of ‘chaos’ captures what we are witnessing in terms of more frequent, extreme and unpredictable weather patterns.

But it was probably not the best time for a lecture on climate chaos, nor was it the best time to point out that there is a remarkable scientific consensus on climate change – ‘remarkable’ because it is rare to see this degree of scientific agreement on anything. Science is, after all, fuelled by dispute, disagreement and difference. That indeed is its nature – that’s how it develops and grows and changes. But when it comes to climate change, the scientists agree that there’s been an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and that this is linked to a general warming of the planet. There is agreement that mean temperatures have increased over the past century and that they will continue to grow. They also agree that it is ‘highly likely’ that human beings have contributed to this through their behaviour, on the basis that these changes in greenhouse gas emissions and global warming have mirrored major changes in human activity, like the Industrial Revolution, and changing patterns of land use, energy demands and transport.

But the term ‘highly likely’ seems to be part of the problem. It’s not ‘certain,’ the critics say, not like death itself (or taxes, as Benjamin Franklin wryly noted); it sounds woolly and vague to people unused to probabilistic reasoning. Climate scientists also agree that the impact of climate change on the planet will be severe, but with variability in exactly how severe. They have modelled a range of possible outcomes, but working out the exact probability of each possible outcome is more problematic because of degrees of uncertainty in the modelling, including knowledge of the earth’s climate system and future human activity. That’s the problem with science; it deals with probabilities and likelihoods.

What the scientists say

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which comprises hundreds of the world’s leading scientists, is the international agency charged with reviewing and evaluating the vast body of accumulating scientific evidence around climate change. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Over the past three decades, it has issued a succession of reports and ‘consensus statements’ summarising the current state of extant knowledge on climate change, with the accumulating evidence, still couched in probabilistic terms, pointing more and more to one inescapable conclusion.

In 1995, the IPCC concluded, ‘The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the global climate.’ In the 2007 report, the IPCC concluded,

Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy … Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is very likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 2013 report, the IPCC concluded, ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal (italics added) and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia … It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause.’ In 2015, the IPCC concluded that they are ‘now 95 percent certain that humans are the main cause of current global warming’ (IPCC 2015: v; italics added). The IPCC also suggested that, on the basis of the existing evidence, a rise in global temperature will have ‘severe and widespread impacts on … substantial species extinctions, large risks to global and regional food security … growing food or working outdoors,’ as well as producing more extreme fluctuations in weather, including droughts, flooding and storms. The conclusions of the IPCC have been endorsed and supported by over 200 scientific agencies around the globe, including the principal scientific organisations in each of the G8 countries such as the National Academy of Science in the United States and the Royal Society in the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, an increasing number of people are witnessing the devastating effects of climate change first-hand, with increased adverse weather conditions such as frequent flooding, stronger hurricanes, longer heatwaves, more tsunamis and periods of drought (IPCC 2015; UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2016). The World Health Organisation (WHO 2017) warns that with temperatures rising and the increase in rainfall, we need to be prepared for more illnesses resulting from climate change, including mosquito-borne infections such as malaria, dengue and the Zika virus. The WHO report, ‘Climate change already claims tens of thousands of lives a year from diseases, heat and extreme weather,’ and they say it is ‘the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.’ Indeed, the World Economic Forum identified climate change as the top global risk facing humanity – a greater risk than weapons of mass destruction and severe water shortages (Global Risk Report 2016).

The evidence suggests that human beings are the most significant contributor to climate change through energy use, population growth, land use and patterns of consumption (IPCC 2015). Currently, CO₂ emissions from human activity are at their highest ever level and continue to rise. Global CO₂ emissions in 2011 were reported as being ‘150 times higher than they were in 1850’ (World Resource Institute 2014, see also IPCC 2015). Although we cannot undo the damage already done with regards to climate change, we do have the power to adapt our behaviour to ameliorate any future effects.

Despite the fact that the role of human activity in its causation is ‘clear’ (and ‘growing’), evidence for large-scale behavioural adaptation on the part of the public is absent. Indeed, there appears to be a monumental disconnect between the science of climate change, and the public’s perception of climate change and their subsequent actions. For example, a 2013 survey by Yale University found that only 63% of Americans ‘believe that global warming is happening.’ Interestingly, this figure had been higher (72%) back in 2008, before the effects of the economic crisis were fully felt and before the 2009 ‘Climategate’ scandal where emails of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia were hacked. It was suggested at the time that there had been some manipulation of the scientific data, and climate scientists, like everyone else in this great ‘climate change debate,’ had a vested interest to protect. Belief in climate change dropped to 52% in 2010. Nearly half of Americans in a 2010 survey thought that global warming was attributable to natural causes rather than being attributable to human activity – climate scientists clearly think otherwise.

The answer as to why there is such a great divide in opinions between scientists and the public (and between different sections of the public) could be analysed in a number of different ways. We will argue that it’s most appropriate to consider this in psychological terms, but bearing in mind that both the problem itself and any potential solutions are multidimensional and multileveled. It is a global issue, involving different countries and governments (and therefore requiring a consideration of local and global politics), and diverse social groups with different demographics, different patterns of media consumption and different educational levels (and, therefore, a consideration of sociological, economic and educational perspectives), with implications for manufacture and industry (involving a consideration of both economic and international trade). And, of course, it involves individuals and their beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviour, which, we would argue, can be thought of as sitting at the centre of everything, with their values and attitudes driving both consumer behaviour and the production of goods.

Psychology may indeed hold the key to many of the more puzzling aspects of our reaction to climate change, but to understand why and how, we will have to venture into the mind of Donald Trump, we will have to consider the gaze fixations of consumers in the first few milliseconds when they look at a product in a supermarket and we will have to analyse how and why human beings use ‘lazy’ reasoning to arrive at certain types of conclusions and what smoking and climate change have in common. The answer, by the way, is that both are extremely harmful, but for many years, both were the subject of a huge ‘scientific debate’ (manufactured and paid for) about the real damage they can cause. We will examine how this debate was fuelled and who exactly paid for it. We will venture into the conscious mind of the public and their unconscious mind, and argue that the ‘conflict’ between these two types of processes might hold the key to many of the recurrent issues in this whole domain (Beattie 2018).

Some reactions to the science of climate change

There has been scientific evidence for the role of human activity in producing increased greenhouse gas emissions and climate change for a considerable time. Indeed, as far back as 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated the possible effects of doubling the amount of carbon dioxide on global temperatures. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Scientific Advisory Council warned that the constant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could ‘modify the heat balance of the atmosphere.’ In the United Kingdom, the Stern Review (conducted by Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank) concluded over a decade ago that ‘climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.’ Stern’s conclusion at the time was that ‘climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health and use of land and the environment.’ Stern also concluded that it is extremely probable that human activity and particularly patterns of consumption and energy use, driven by consumer demand for higher standards of living, are significant factors in the rise of global CO₂ emissions and therefore a major driver of climate change. He argued that ‘Emissions have been, and continue to be, driven by economic growth’ – a view subsequently supported by the various IPCC reports, as we have seen.

Evidence for climate change has been available for some time, so why has this ‘urgent global response’ (in Stern’s words) not occurred? The IPCC (2015) have argued that we could limit the effects of climate change by changing our individual and collective behaviour. We could fly less, eat less meat, use public transport, cycle or walk, recycle, choose more low carbon products, have shorter showers, waste less food or reduce home energy use. There has been some significant local change but nothing like the ‘global response’ required to ameliorate the further deleterious effects of climate change.

We are reminded here of a somewhat depressing statistic reported by a leading multinational, Unilever, in their ‘Sustainable Living Plan.’ In 2013, they outlined how they were going to halve the greenhouse gas impact of their products across the life cycle by 2020. To achieve this goal, they reduced greenhouse gas emissions from their manufacturing chain. They opted for more environmentally friendly sourcing of raw materials, doubled their use of renewable energy and produced concentrated liquids and powders. They reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transport and greenhouse gas emissions from refrigeration. They also restricted employee travel. The result of all of these initiatives was that their ‘greenhouse gas footprint impact per consumer… .increased by around 5% since 2010.’ They concluded, ‘We have made good progress in those areas under our control but … the big challenges are those areas not under our direct control like… .consumer behaviour’ (2013:16; emphasis added). It seems that consumers are not ‘getting the message.’ They are not opting for the low carbon alternatives in the way envisaged; they are not changing the length of their showers (to reduce energy and water consumption); they are not breaking their high-carbon habits. The question is why?

This failure on the part of the public to change their behaviour is perhaps even more puzzling given that the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the United Kingdom have repeatedly argued that ‘Many people are willing to do a bit more to limit their environmental impact, yet people have a much lower level of understanding about what they can do and what would make a difference.’ The Unilever campaign was, of course, designed to help in this regard by making more sustainable products readily available. This led to a number of other government-backed campaigns in the United Kingdom designed to persuade us to change our behaviour – turning off lights when not in use, buying low carbon products, car sharing, etc. These are all relatively clearly defined actions, which could make a significant difference if enough people did them, but the results were disappointing.

Take, for example, the issue of carbon labelling of products to guide consumers towards the more environmentally friendly alternative. Tesco, the UK based retailer, introduced carbon labelling in 2007, aiming to include carbon labels on all of its 70,000 own-brand products. Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco at that time said, ‘The green movement must become a mass movement in green consumption.’ To achieve this goal, Leahy argued, ‘We must empower everyone – not just the enlightened or the affluent.’ But Tesco dropped this plan in 2012; they argued that other supermarkets hadn’t joined them in this enterprise and said that the accurate calculation of carbon footprint was slower and far more expensive than originally anticipated. However, in reality, it simply didn’t work. And perhaps that could have been anticipated (Beattie 2012). In an experimental situation, the present authors found that when viewing products, people paid very little attention to carbon labels. Using eye tracking to monitor individual gaze fixations on products every 40 milliseconds, we found that in less than 7% of all cases, participants fixate on either the carbon-footprint icon or the accompanying carbon-footprint information in the first five seconds (Beattie et al. 2010). Five seconds is important, because that’s the average length of time we view a product before making our choice in a supermarket.

Thus the public in the United Kingdom, in their role as consumers, were not behaving in the way anticipated by both the government and major retailers. There were clearly some important psychological issues here given that people said that they wanted carbon labels on products, but then failed to look at them. This is the kind of issue we will explore in this book, which we started in December 2017. The date could be important – views on climate change do alter depending upon major world events (and the specific weather at any given time, including whether it’s snowing or not). It’s sometimes critical to put a date stamp on projects, particularly ones like this – projects that affect us all. One day in the future, we might well look back on climate change and wonder what all the fuss was about. The science, after all, was clear and unambiguous. The climate scientists communicated their findings effectively to politicians, policymakers and the public and everyone (more or less at the same time in this ideal scenario) decided that urgent change was required, and, as a result, modified their behaviour at the personal, community, societal and national levels, resulting in a global trend – a seismic shift in attitudes and behaviour. That is one scenario.

Or, possibly, one day in the future, we might well look back and wonder why we didn’t actually do something about climate change sooner when all the signs were there and clear to see, and now (at this point in the future where some future generations survive) it is simply too late to do anything. The science might have been thought to be clear and unambiguous by some, but for whatever set of complex psychological reasons, the message was not received, or it was received but not believed, or it was received and judged to be credible, but we assumed that it wouldn’t affect us so we paid scant attention to it in the hurly-burly of our daily lives, or we tried in a small way to make some changes and then we gave up because we concluded that other people were not making the same effort, and we felt foolish.

This is what this book is about – those ‘complex psychological reasons,’ those psychological factors which may actually be quite simple but incredibly powerful that might be influencing how we respond to climate change at every level in terms of the most basic processes such as attention and perception in terms of our emotional and cognitive responses, in terms of our interpretation and understanding, in terms of our representation and world view, in terms of our willingness to talk and share our views about it to our friends and colleagues (or strangers on a bus) and then further up the chain to our representatives and politicians, all shaping our predisposition to act or not.

So what is the psychology of climate change?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: the man on the bus and the science of climate change
• 2 Fake news: the science and politics of climate change
• 3 Our rational and irrational selves
• 4 See no evil: how do we stay so optimistic?
• 5 Climate change campaigns and why they failed
• 6 Hard lessons from cigarette advertising
• 7 Assessing our real attitude to climate change
• 8 Concluding remarks
• Further reading
• References