Are Human Beings Hard-Wired to Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/106982/are_human_beings_hard-wired_to_ignore_the_threat_of_catastrophic_climate_change/



Are Human Beings Hard-Wired to Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?
By Lisa Bennett, Greater Good. Posted November 14, 2008.

Climate scientists wonder why people don't do more about global warming. Social scientists have some troubling answers.

Three years ago, I became obsessed with global warming. Practically overnight, my worries about its potential effects outstripped my worries about so many other national and global issues, even personal ones.

Indeed, as the mother of two young boys, I began to think it a bit crazy that I attended to every bump and scrape on my children's little bodies and budding egos, but largely ignored the threat likely to put sizeable areas of the world, including parts of the coastal city where we live, underwater within their lifetime.

That year, 2005, marked a turning point for many people. After decades of observation, speculation, and analysis, the world's climate scientists had reached a consensus, and increasingly the general public was accepting it. As USA Today reported, "The Debate is Over: Globe is Warming."

The next step, scientists advised, was action. We needed to take significant and urgent steps to cut our dependence on fossil fuels by 25 percent or more, something NASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen, said we had only a decade to do if we were to avoid the great global warming tipping point-that level at which increased temperatures would unleash unprecedented global disasters.

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"Many climate scientists find the response to global warming completely baffling," says Elke Weber, a Columbia University psychologist and the chair of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change's Public Attitudes/Ethical Issues Working Group. According to Weber, climate scientists just can't understand why government and the public have been so slow to act on the extraordinary information these scientists have provided.

But now a growing number of social scientists are offering their expertise in behavioral decision making, risk analysis, and evolutionary influences on human behavior to explain our limited responses to global warming. Among the most significant factors they point to: The way we're psychologically wired and socially conditioned to respond to crises makes us ill-suited to react to the abstract and seemingly remote threat posed by global warming. Their insights are also leading to some intriguing recommendations about how to get people to take action-including the potentially dangerous prospect of playing on people's fears.

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anything that is bad or gives them a negative feeling (in general terms)?

We are not wired at all to deal with long term issues. See tiger. Tiger eat you. Run. Thats our million year survival tactic.

People dont get several things that would allow them to respond to long term issues: statistics, and geometric progressions. We dont get evidence that doesnt apply directly to experience: ie lack of "statistics" thinking. And we dont get large numbers, or nonlinear increases etc. So we dont get ppm ppb etc and how they relate to us.

So the question is - will we "evolve" to understand them before its too late? I dont think that most of us will. So how do we proceed with the majority not on board?

explained. Kids -get- polar bears are drowning.

Whether we are moved to act on info depends on how issue is framed.

This is almost entirely due to a lack of political will at the top.

Zero leadership and that not only includes Government but the Science community as well.

Scientists defeat the cause by arguing amongst themselves and refusing to issue definitive statements.

Scientists and science writers also screwed things up by opting to call it global "warming". The term should be climate change and/or global volatility.

How easy is it for Rush Limbaugh to point to colder temperatures and say "there is no global warming"?

Global Climate Change is a problem that has to be handled on the Government level.

Our Government and those overseas aren't willing to push the case.

You should see what they're doing to the Jamaican coast line. I watched this new documentary 'Jamaica for Sale' last night and hubby had to calm me down since I was seething with anger at these massive hotel complexes destroying both the environment and the view. In some areas the reef is dead or dying and the fish have vanished. Traditional fishermen and an entire way of life is being destroyed as these all inclusive structures invade our space.

We sure are destroying this planet and future generations will condemn those that ignore the climate change disaster that is here. Five Cat3 or above hurricanes in five months is a new record. We ignore climate change at our collective peril.

Very few aspects of human behavior are actually hardwired.

as a survival mechanism.
but how you really prove such a thing, I don't know.

and I'm not. I am therefore proof that it is not hardwired.

Facial expressions in humans are hardwired. Most other evolutionarily influenced aspects of human behavior consist of tendencies and predispositions. Evolutionary psychology falls short when it tries to oversimplify things.

I know people who vary greatly on how they tend to view life. However, there may be a human predisposition to denial, which could be presented as optimism.

Our brains are still wired for juggling relationships among the hundred or so people we know. Intellectually, most are capable of imagining the larger world, but few of us are able to care about it.

... there are still a lot more people than you think that are not convinced that the science is real.

And people aren't going to do ANYTHING as long as there is more than a 10% doubt about that.