Asleep at the Wheel
Ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica has revealed the unique, perhaps unprecedented, climatic conditions which appeared on Earth approximately 11,700 years ago and which have provided the basis for agriculture, settled life and human civilization (Petit et al. 1999). It is these conditions, ones that marked the beginning of what geologists called the Holocene, that we are now systematically destroying (Lieberman and Gordon 2018). Climate change, soil and ocean exhaustion, and mass species extinctions are both symptoms of this destruction and speed its progress.
The impacts of climate change are already affecting us. Sea-level rise threatens the island states of the south Pacific and delta regions such as Bangladesh. Rising seawater temperatures mean that 67% of all shallow water coral in the Great Barrier Reef is already dead or dying. Rising land temperatures threaten once arable land with desertification, the resulting displacement of peoples fueling conflicts in areas such as North Sudan and Syria. Changes in climate have what is called a âmultiplier effectâ leading to changes in other systems such as social systems and soil systems.
We know the signs, the scientific evidence is now overwhelming with 97% of all peer-reviewed studies between 1991 and 2011 supporting the concept of human-caused climate change (Cook et al. 2013). The scientific community is also aware that these impacts do not occur incrementally, drip by drip in a gradualist way. Indeed some geologists are convinced that the transition into the Holocene itself was triggered by changes occurring within just a few years (Zalasiewicz and Williams 2012). Gradual changes in quantity can suddenly tip over into a change of quality, just as with a human being when steadily increasing levels of stress suddenly produce a breakdown creating an entirely new emotional state. Understanding the Earth as a dynamic system in which quantitative and qualitative changes interact has informed the notion of âdangerous climate changeâ and the belief that beyond a two degrees increase in global average temperatures the possibility of sudden and uncontrollable systemic ruptures greatly increases.
For two decades attempts to bring governments together to tackle climate change were thwarted by North/South conflicts and national self-interestedness. Finally in Paris in 2015 all 195 of the worldâs nations overcame their differences and committed themselves to decarbonisation plans which would keep global average temperature rises to âwell below two degreesâ. The very next year atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide breached the symbolic mark of 400 parts per million, something ice core data indicates last occurred over 800,000 years ago. The next year, the USA, the worldâs leading carbon emitter, declared its intention to pull out of the Paris agreement. Just as bad, but less widely publicized, many signatories to the Paris agreement such as the UK seemed to behave as if signing the agreement was equivalent to âjob doneâ. It looked as if it was then back to âbusiness as usualâ with UK government pledges to support increased air travel (Heathrowâs Third Runway) and a rowing back on state interventions which had, for example, nurtured the renewables sector.
According to the latest projections being prepared for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even allowing for no sudden ruptural change, a âbusiness as usualâ scenario would lead to an increase in global average temperatures by a minimum of 3.0% by 2100, and if this was combined with a lurch towards competitive nationalism and the breakdown of the already poor international cooperation on issues such as climate change the projections are worse (Carbon Brief 2018). Letâs face it, a three degrees increase would be dire (Lynas 2008). Large parts of the planet would be effectively uninhabitable, mass migration would make todayâs migration seem negligible and the impact on the oceans and agriculture is unimaginable. How we would prevent a descent into barbarism is difficult to knowâmany of the super-rich are already planning their escape (Rushkoff 2017).
What appears to be our collective equanimity in the face of this unprecedented risk is perhaps the greatest mystery of our age. Many have attempted to offer explanations. Some say that climate change is just too intangible, lacking concreteness and immediacy it haunts us as a hyperobject defying our abilities to get our heads around it. Others argue that as it has become politicized climate science has lost its ability to represent fact and truth and has become simply seen by one group as a political totem belonging to another group (Dunlap et al. 2016). Opinion survey data provide us with some insights. Drawing on data from over 100 countries a research team at Yale found that whilst 90% of those polled in North America, Europe and Japan were aware of climate change, compared to only 40% worldwide, they were much less likely to see it as a serious risk than those in developing countries (Lee et al. 2015). This chimes with a recent study of attitudes in the UK which draws on British Social Attitudes data (Fisher et al. 2017). Whilst over 90% of respondents in all age groups believed in the existence of climate change, only 36% saw climate change as being âmainlyâ or âentirelyâ due to human activity. As with the Yale study, level of education was the main predictor of attitudes, though the UK data suggest age is also an important factorâthose least aware of and least concerned about climate change were older and less educated. The authors concluded
that the majority in Britain appears to have fairly middling attitudes towards climate change. They know about it, and acknowledge a human component, but are overall relatively indifferent and apathetic about climate change. (Fisher et al. 2017, p. 23)
How can we deepen our understanding of this collective complacency, one that none of us in developed countries are immune to? This is the aim of the present volume of essays.
Psychology Lite
Itâs amazing to realize just how crude and simplified the models were that until recently guided political elites in their thinking about human psychology. Whether these elites had in mind the economic or political behaviour of citizens or, more specifically, their behaviour in relation to issues such as health, energy consumption or climate change, they essentially shared a perspective akin to Spock in Star Trek. This assumed that humans were logical creatures that sought to act in reasonable (e.g. self interested) and consistent ways on the basis of information that was available and relevant to the choices that faced them. Spockism was (and still is) a pre-psychological perspective, essentially one that draws upon neoclassical economics. In climate change it found expression in the continued belief in some policy quarters that information was the key to change, that once citizens had the right information, communicated in the right way, then the scales would fall from their eyes and they would adopt more sustainable lifestyles. This perspective was not one which just bedeviled climate change, in the world of public policy it found expression in âpublic choice theoryâ which underlay attempts to introduce markets into the public sector (guiding theories about how parents âchooseâ schools based on information such as league tables, etc.).
Gradually the limitations of this approach became clear and over the last two decades an alternative which stresses the limited or âboundedâ rationality of human beings has gained ground. The new fashion is for âbehavioural economicsâ which draws upon contemporary social psychology and advances in neuroscience to illustrate the ways in which human behaviour is more complex than Spockist accounts would have it. Indeed according to contemporary research it seems, to the dismay of Spockists around the world, that we are crowd following creatures who constantly use mental âshort cutsâ and âfeelingâ cues to act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves. These and other ideas (the messenger is often more important than the message, we often rely in an automaton-like way upon our âdefaultsâ, etc.) have become the stock in trade of behavioural economists and thinkers such as Daniel Kahneman (2011) and Paul Slovic (2000). The emergence of neuroscience in recent decades has also offered a new perspective on the nature of less conscious influences on human behaviour. In their 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein introduce the reader to the neuroscientific distinction between the conscious, reasoning part of the brain (which they call the Reflective System) and the part of the brain, the amygdala, sometimes referred to as the âemotional brainâ, which responds quickly and subconsciously to a range of signals in our environment. They argue that the new approach has raised âserious questions about the rationality of many judgements people makeâ (Thaler and Sunstein 2009, p. 7), in other words, it has drawn attention to the extent to which âintentionalityâ had been overemphasized by Spockists.
Such ideas have had a big influence on new thinking about human failure to engage with climate change such as George Marshallâs book Donât Even Think About It.
So far so good, but letâs be clear, this doesnât mean that political elites are finally about to adopt a more profound understanding of the human psyche. Experimental social psychology and neuroscience still offer a fairly simple view of humankind and one which splits the individual off from society. Moreover, their methodologies are informed by a positivist view of science which means that they only study behaviour which can be subject to experimental control (controlled and replicable laboratory and/or questionnaire-based research, typically using students as research subjects). Drawing upon the natural rather than the social sciences this approach assumes that it is possible to study scientifically the relationships between what are called dependent and independent v...