nuclear-news

Inaction on climate change due to ‘mental blocks’

Mental blocks contribute to our inaction on climate change, Irish Times, September 3rd, 2012 JOHN GIBBONS The future of our species is under threat – yet we choose not to recognise the danger

IT’S REASSURING to imagine we are, by and large, rational beings who base our judgments and decisions on the best evidence we can muster.

The scientific evidence suggests otherwise.

Nowhere can the limits of human rationality be more forcefully encountered than in how we have collectively failed to respond to the existential threat posed by climate change…..Evidence from behavioural and brain sciences points to the fact that “the human moral judgment system is not well equipped to identify climate change – a complex, large-scale and unintentionally caused phenomenon – as an important moral imperative”, according to a recent article in the  science journal, Nature Climate Change.

The researchers identified key reasons why, despite the mountains of hard scientific evidence, we have signally failed to react to the colossal threats posed by climate change.
First, our moral intuitions are strongly driven by emotional responses…..
Second, the harms arising from pollution and resource depletion are a real but largely unintended by-product of economic activity……
Another roadblock is moral tribalism….
The deliberate politicisation of the science of climate change has allowed many otherwise intelligent, educated people (most notably, conservative white males) to reject objective scientific facts from credible sources in favour of shabby but reassuring conspiracy theories.
The final factor at work is the perception that climate change is a threat that affects others who live elsewhere – either people in distant countries or from future generations. We can easily frame them as out-group members, somehow different from us and, so, less deserving of our concern….. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0903/1224323533104.html

September 4, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general