Why don't people respond to the threat of global climate disruption by changing their behavior? The newly-released report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Climate Change has some answers.
The APA says psychological factors help explain our slow reaction to the threat of global warming. "While most Americans think climate change is an important issue, they don't see it as an immediate threat, so getting people to "go green" requires policymakers, scientists and marketers to look at psychological barriers to change and what leads people to action."
The report cites a national Pew Research Center poll in which 75 percent to 80 percent of respondents said that climate change is an important issue. But respondents ranked it last in a list of 20 compelling issues, such as the economy or terrorism. Despite warnings from scientists and environmental experts that limiting the effects of climate change means humans need to make some severe changes now, people don't feel a sense of urgency. The task force said numerous psychological barriers are to blame, including:
Uncertainty - Research has shown that uncertainty over climate change reduces the frequency of "green" behavior.
Mistrust - Evidence shows that most people don't believe the risk messages of scientists or government officials.
Denial - A substantial minority of people believe climate change is not occurring or that human activity has little or nothing to do with it, according to various polls.
Undervaluing Risks - A study of more than 3,000 people in 18 countries showed that many people believe environmental conditions will worsen in 25 years. While this may be true, this thinking could lead people to believe that changes can be made later.
Lack of Control - People believe their actions would be too small to make a difference and choose to do nothing.
Habit - Ingrained behaviors are extremely resistant to permanent change while others change slowly. Habit is the most important obstacle to pro-environment behavior, according to the report.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Has the APA answered the big question? Or are they missing all the less-easily-quantifiable reasons why people aren't yet really responding to the threat of chronic climate destabilization?
To read the whole report, go to at http://www.apa.org/releases/climate-change.pdf or read the APA press release at http://www.apa.org/releases/climate-change.html
Press coverage of the report can be found at
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Aug 5
Booster Shots - LA Times health blog.
Is the Climate Problem in Our Heads?
By Andrew C. Revkin - Aug. 5
Dot Earth - New York Times environment blog.
Look at it this way, deniers: if you're wrong and you've prevented us from doing anything, the whole planet is in trouble, including your grandkids. If you're right and we "mistakenly" take steps to get off fossil fuels, the worst that happens is our country becomes a power-house in alternative energy and we don't need to go to war to grab the last scraps of oil.
Either way, it makes a lot more sense to be safe than sorry.
Oil industry expert Jan Lundberg offers this analysis of climate-change denial: "Climate-change denialism, or just the denial of human-caused global warming, is on the rise or becoming more prominent precisely because the evidence for irrefutable human impacts is more and more obvious. And the implications are that we must change our lifestyles, and corporate greed will have to take a back seat to humanity's greater interests."
To read the rest of the article, go to...
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=513&Itemid=1
Basically, name-calling will not win you any friends among to only group here that you might have a chance to influence. I would think they taught that sort of thing in Psych 101.
lff
Think the world is predictable? What will the temperature be in New York City one year from now? Will the minimum level of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean in September, 2009 be greater or less than two years ago? Than four years ago? Will the global temperature for 2009 be greater or lower than in 1998?
To put the facts bluntly: there is now a consensus by scientists that the climate is changing (hello - why do you think the glaciers are melting?) and that human activities like fossil fuel burning are the cause. Scientists are also now able to predict what will happen if this situation continues, and the threat to us and our children and grandchildren is very real and very frightening.
Who benefits from putting out these lies that prevent us making sane environmental changes? (I also wonder who benefits from the lies being put out about the supposed dangers of universal health care). The answer is always the same: certain economic interests (oil companies, insurance companies etc. and the policians they control) who feel threatened by the facts. History will show that these lies by corporate interests have caused incalculable harm.
The media has a responsibility to call out the disseminators of such harmful falsehoods.
A consensus of scientists knows the greenhouse effect is amplified by human activitiy - we KNOW its at work. We also know that temperatures were higher in the later half of the 20th century than in the earlier half. That's about where the consensus ends... (Not that a PHD headcount scorecard proves ANY theory, but regardless).
The doom and gloom is highly spectulative, and relies on assumptions of a sensitive climate system that is dominated by positive feedbacks. I don't think there's good empirical evidence that nature behaves that way. I also don't think it makes much sense to take a linear regression of a temperature time-series and extrapolate it into the future - especially not when the supposed signal is weaker than the noise.
Just my $.02
Actually supporting AGW seems to be more a religious belief rather than the other way around. Look how you addressed the non-believers as "denialist." That indicates that you "believe" this is fact when it is one theory by a group of scientists.
The facts that we have is CO2 is a greenhouse gas that will cause the temperature to increase. We also know that this increase is logrithmic in nature, that is one molecule of CO2 will raise the temperature X while the very next molecule of CO2 will raise the temperature X-y. Both the alarmists and the skeptics agree on this.
Richard, so many of your arguments just play to the uninformed crowd and are not relevant to real scientists in the slightest. This fact explains why the denying crowd is so far out of the mainstream.
http://www.chalquist.com/apaclimate.html
In this society too many of us seem to be operating from a top-down "marketing" point of view, so the premise seems to be that we just need to do a better job of "marketing" green behaviors to "consumers."
What I'd really like to see is an awake citizenry that demands responsible behavior from its governments and corporations. But we've been put to sleep by decades of just this kind of psychologically-sophisticated marketing (but of the anti-social variety) and how eager, really, are the powers that be to see us all wake up and demand some accountability?
We can see all of these factors at work in the health care debate as well as the climate change pseudo-debate. Thanks to misinformation, disinformation plus behind-closed-doors government dealmaking with the insurance and pharma industries, people are confused and not demanding the solutions that are in their own best interests.
The difference with global climate change is the urgency of the situation. If we screw up on the health care issue, we can try again in a few years when we realize the half-way reforms and band-aids didn't do the trick. But with global climate disruption it may be too late.
This whole movement sounds more like a used car sales pitch than scientific study.
As for your argument that it's OK for Al because at least he is trying to get the word out, would it be OK for me to rob and rape as long as I encorage others not to rob and rape?
My justification for not trying to cut my carbon footprint is two fold.
First, the idea that a trace gas (not a pollutant) is going to cause the end of the world is nonsense.
Secondly, CO2 is fertilizer for life. The biomass has increased since CO2 has gone up. Plants grow better (optimum level of CO2 seems to be 1000ppm--right now we are at 380ppm) have bigger fruit and use less water. So not only are you causing pain in the underdeveloped nations growing crops for biofuels, but reducing the carbon in the atmosphere will decrease the food available in non-biofuel crops.