Some colleagues and I came up with the following list of barriers that keep people in our society from facing and dealing with the climate crisis. I thought you might find some food for thought here. I'd love to hear what you think!
1. Climate change is scary stuff. It makes people feel bad
just thinking about it. And people don’t like to feel bad ...
so they try not to think about it.
2. Climate change is a result of greenhouse gas pollution,
but it’s not being addressed in terms of air / atmospheric
pollution.
3. People have been so numbed and dumbed down by
screen time that the constant repetition of deniers’
“memes” in the social media echo chamber makes their
claims sound true. Because people are too busy to check
out the veracity of the deniers’ claims, they are
susceptible to being misled and deceived.
4. Selfishness is no longer frowned upon and sacrifice is for chumps. In our society, people just don’t think like
ancestors anymore. (“Everybody wants change but
nobody wants to change”—a YouTube commenter).
5. Climate change is a global issue that makes personal and
local solutions seem unimportant, trite, and useless, so
people get discouraged.
6. In a weird sort of NIMBYism, people say climate change
is happening elsewhere (Not In My Back Yard), so they
don’t have to think about it. What has happened to our
compassion?
7. The concerted denial and confusion campaign has been
extremely well funded and organized by vested interests
(seven of the eight biggest corporations in the world are
fossil fuel companies). This denial campaign has been
very successful in seeding doubt about the science in the
public’s mind and very successful in promoting delay in
our global response to greenhouse gas pollution.
8. Climate scientists who aren’t trained to communicate
with the public can’t compete with the self-proclaimed
pundits in the denial camp.
9. Cognitive dissonance creates a vicious circle. People
don’t see governments taking urgent action, so they think
it’s not urgent. And since citizens aren’t demanding
urgent action, governments don’t want to take urgent
action, afraid it might impact the economy. (Actually,
climate change mitigation would be a large economic
benefit everywhere.)
10. There’s so much to know and learn and understand!
That’s why people must listen to scientists, not deniers.
But lack of media literacy means the public has fallen for
things like the bias of false “balance” in the news.
11. Scientific, ecological, and climate illiteracy is
widespread. The public lacks understanding of concepts
such as ecological limits, peer review, weight of
evidence, feedback loops, exponential growth, shifting
baselines, carbon cycles, and even natural versus
industrial / anthropogenic causes of climate change. This is
where teachers can make a difference.
12. This is a crisis of imagination and creativity. Getting to
zero carbon ought to be viewed as an exciting goal.
Teachers can contribute to reaching this goal!
13. In our culture, people don’t always work well together.
Key stakeholders and negotiators often find it difficult to
cooperate. Sometimes processes and rules—not to
mention greed—get in the way of success.
14. People don’t get that our greatest near-term threats from
climate change are food and water shortages and
insecurity. Humans have evolved over the last 10,000
years into a species dependent on agriculture, and
agriculture has depended on the stable climate of the last
10,000 years. Climate change threats are more imminent
than people think.
