Some thoughts about psychological issues involved in Climate Change.
There is lot of discussion on climate change at the moment. Most of this is centred around the severity and speed of the effects and what the world might to about it. Not too much has looked at the psychological and sociological issues, even though these will play a significant role in human response to the crisis and to the effectiveness of any solutions put into play. Responses to the crisis can be viewed both in terms of society and of the individual. Society as represented by media, governments and business / industry, though these groups will not necessarily talk with one voice. However, they both collectively and individually influence policy. We as individuals react to that policy and feedback reaction which in turn influences it.
George Monbiot in his recent lecture outlined how major players on the global scene have, through self interest and denial, down-played the problem and decried those who have tried to explain the severity of the issue. There is a strong human trait that pushes us to only listen to arguments that support our personal beliefs and values. This can be seen in the choices we make about the media we listen to, read and watch. It also explains why we like to ban subjects around values and beliefs (such as politics and religion) at events like dinner parties where we want to avoid the discomfort and challenge of alternative points of view. Even though the political profile of climate change has been significantly raised during the past few months and the whole concept is now widely accepted, there are still strong voices putting forward contrary arguments.
Our attitudes based on our beliefs and values are more fluid than we like to think, though we will generally behave in ways and seek out information that reinforces them, rather than allow objectivity scrutiny to change them. They are firmly linked to feeling which tends to take precedence over thinking in the influence of our judgements and actions– despite our attachment to the belief that the opposite is true. We struggle to concoct systems for producing objective results (at interviews for example) but still find that personal feelings consciously or unconsciously conspire to manipulate the results. When confronted with opposing thoughts, feelings or behaviour (called Cognitive Dissonance), we seek to relieve the discomfort by changing our relationship to the one that is easiest to alter. An example of such dissonance may be running a large flashy car even though we know it contributes far more to global warming than a small one would. Our usual course of action is to come up with some justification for the behaviour which brings it back in line with our values. For the behaviour to change, then contrary to popular belief, it is often behaviour that tends to alter beliefs rather than the belief affecting behaviour. Incentives that encourage a change in behaviour do more to move the values of society than all the advertising and promotion of rational argument put together. Once change starts to take hold, then our desire to appear ‘normal’ leads to a diffusion of change through society.
One of the main reasons we cling to particular views of the world is because experience limits our world view and so we cannot conceive of anything different. One such firmly established paradigm is that of ‘economic growth’. Our whole world view is currently based on the necessity of economic growth driven by the flow of money. We have to ask ourselves if we can successfully confront global warming and produce a sustainable society unless we ditch the concept of Gross Domestic Product as a measure of success. Current world belief – as encapsulated in the Stern Report suggests we can by switching the flow of currency through non-greenhouse-gas producing commodities. GDP is a capitalist concept which essentially relies on exploitation to succeed, and the exploited inevitably turn out to be either the environment or the people. Profit comes at the expense of something or somebody and by convincing people that they want things they don’t really need (which is itself is a form of exploitation). Our world is now geared up to waste – fast turn over, short-lived goods that are disposed of rather than reused. Fashion and trivial innovation drive this process. Some aspects of this are slowly changing as the call to recycle grows and packaging is reduced. However, even this trend is driven by the growing cost of disposals rather than the need to conserve resources and reduce pollution.
There is an inherent belief in most of us that what we need to strive for most in life is happiness. However, few of us really know what we mean by being happy. It is a state we associate with the past and the future rather than one that we can readily define in the present. Most of us believe that money and success are associated with happiness. We are constantly indoctrinated with this belief through the media. So how do we push a more sustainable and less material life style in a society with a thirst for consumerism and growth driven by such notions?
The large national and multinational players that form the hubs of the network of nations still wield considerable influence over the globe, and although colonialisation has now given way to multinationalism in the modern world the effect is the same. The very large companies that are the hubs of the commercial network now exploit and exert influence over the less developed parts of the world just as the Empire builders did in the past. These multinational companies can now exert as much influence as nations and is an inevitable consequence of the evolution of global networks. It is the hubs of these two networks (national & commercial) that need to be influenced if real change is to come about as they have the greatest influence over the ‘small worlds’ they dominate.[1]
One of the real impediment to agreement on global warming measures – which George Monbiot referred to in a different context – is the worry that unless all agree, then those who go alone to meet global warming targets will miss out as those who do not will gain economic advantage – at least in the short term. This is further exacerbated by the third world feeling behind the developed world and see measures to combat global warming as a tool the developed world is using to prevent them from catching up. This can only be achieved at a national level through partnership which works towards parity. However, it is unlikely to happen very fast within the present competitive environment where commerce driven by multinationals based in developed countries and protected by national and global systems developed and supported by those countries. The rationing advocated by George Monbiot to bring parity to levels of individual consumption is unlikely to work at a national level
There is a little joke in conservation which says that ‘tradition’ is what happened last year. This reflects the fact that although we humans spend a great deal of our time looking at the past or into the future, our judgements are based on present experience and short-term memory and both our past memories and our ideas of the future are strongly influenced by these judgements. This habituation makes us very vulnerable to gradual change. Change which has happened slowly is unacknowledged or difficult to assess unless specific measurements are available to clearly put reason above perception. There is also a widespread assumption in the general population that change is always linear. Few understand non-linear (such as exponential) change and in terms of climate change, few people outside the world of environmental science appear to believe that such change will be anything but slowly accumulative. However, this is often not the way of nature and is unlikely to be so in the case of global warming. In fact the models we have predict that considerable feedback loops will come into play to accelerate the process. Global warming is not just one process but a complex series of processes driven by an increase in certain atmospheric gases raising global temperature. Some of these may well be linear; others may be accelerating, where as others may just flip us into a different state after a critical threshold is reached. How many of those wielding power and influence have really taken this on board and understand the folly of assuming that the changes associated with global warming will accumulate in a predictable linear fashion?
World populations are still growing and with environmental degradation will come a shortage of food and water and greater susceptibility to disease; the knock-on sociological effects could be immense; famine and wars more likely. Our high degree of technological specialisation makes our society very vulnerable to a global catastrophe that would result in a sudden decrease in population. Whatever happens, the earth will no doubt survive. It has suffered huge catastrophes in the past and no doubt can do so again. What happens to the human species is a different matter. If society does collapse under severe environmental degradation, at best we could be bounced back into the pre-industrial age, at worst exterminated.
The question is how can we put across the situation in a way that will penetrate peoples’ awareness sufficiently to bring about change? We are told that certain pointers (such as glaciers melting and more severe weather patterns) should alert us to the fact that global warming is setting in and we are experiencing some of these changes or seeing the effects of them on the television. However, it is difficult to remember what the autumn was like ten or twenty years ago. Catastrophes come suddenly and it is difficult to believe in our cosy world that one will happen in twenty or thirty years, leave alone next year. It is not easy to imagine the extremes of nature unless we have experienced it. Even the images we see on the television we are mentally insulated from. Who would have imagined New Orleans flooded almost out of existence, who could imagine the same thing happening to large parts of London? It is difficult, though not impossible. This is where the struggle between reason and feeling comes in again, though we can underpin reason with stories which add impact to facts and enable our imagination to more easily grasp them.
We live in a society where the zeitgeist contains a strong element of anxiety and fear. Our fear is stoked up at every turn. Advertising encourages us to fear that we are not making the grade, not matching up to our peers; insurance is based on fear of loss and damage and the high profile of insurance in our lives thrives on distorting risk; health and safety and litigation raise fear of damage and loss and teach us not to trust, but also allow us to participate in scary and adrenalin-inducing activities in relative safety; the media distorts risk and raises the profile of the tragic from the rare to the common place in our minds; and politics thrives on manipulation through fear and spin, and also teaches us not to trust. All of these things conspire to distort our concepts of risk and raise our levels of anxiety. We in the developed world live in the ambivalence of a cushioned world with no war and relatively low levels of crime but where hype and spin produces an ambience of chronic anxiety. We have created a society of victims where someone is at fault for everything that happens. Personal responsibility goes out of the window in a world where someone has to set rules to prevent me from harming myself.
How does all this relate to global warming: For a start it is not my problem! Why should I restrict my life and comfort whilst the rest of the world is still enjoying itself? What’s the point anyway when the Chinese will cause the global catastrophe all by itself regardless of what I do about it? I am sure you have heard all this before. People look to governments to bring in rules that will sort the problem out – providing that is, that the government does not create too much discomfort in the process, and since democratic governments fear the wrath of the people, nothing significant ever happens except by stealth, relying on the fact that we don’t notice change that happens slowly. Cross-party consensus will help considerably in tackling this issue, and in Britain, at least, it looks as though this may be on the cards. The problem in the case of global warming is that it has now got a head start and so ‘slowly’ may not be fast enough to solve the problem. This is the dilemma that democratic governments now face.
From a contrary standpoint, those opposed to the idea that global warming is threatening the well-being of the planet my well point to the zeitgeist of fear as being one reason why those advocates of doom are having some success. They might well point out that another human trait is that of trying to give meaning to what we see. As a consequence we make assumptions of long-term change out of short-term fluctuations and give meaning to essentially random occurrences. They would argue that this is what the prophets of doom are doing with climate change and in a fearful society it is easy to lead others to think likewise.
However, for those who want to bring about change, fear can also be used to advantage to sway voters into accepting some bitter medicine. One way to do this could be by ensuring that the profile of accumulating natural disasters around the world is maintained at a high level and their impact targeted individual voters by illustrating the results vividly in some believable form – rather than as highly unbelievable Hollywood blockbusters that undermine credibility. The problem in Western Europe is that we live in a very equable climate and so although natural extremes are increasing and we are being more frequently affected by them, they are still not extreme enough to really hit home to people the magnitude of the problems that may be coming their way. However, we may now be reaching the point where well presented messages are beginning to hit home.
Much of western society is now urbanised and has a disassociated relationship with nature, and at best, nature is now looked at rather than lived with or understood. Farming has become an ‘industry’, and the country dwellers as might be defined by the Countryside Alliance appear to mainly see nature as an arena for bloody recreation; and though this may be defined as a relationship with nature, it is a rather dysfunctional one. We have created the notion that nature is a sort of chronic affliction that one has to live with and that one can control it through technology which ultimately has an answer for everything; this produces a state of hubris that is quite unhelpful in the present circumstances. It reflects another of our cultural paradigms: one which places much more emphasis on curing symptoms than on prevention: play today and tomorrow will look after itself. Pleasure in its many forms has a strong and addictive pull and is not easily relinquished. One of the psychological problems in solving global warming is that the short-term rewards of consumerism are more compelling than the long-term prospects of environmentally degrading climate change. In this situation the notion that technology can solve everything provides us with the justification we need to sanction ourselves to continue to behave in an irresponsible way. The gap must be narrowed by the short-term rewards being reduced and the long-term ills made more compelling and urgent.
The Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, developed the idea of the shadow; that part of our personality which contains the traits that we disavow and which we then project onto others. The American psychologist Arnold Mindell took this a step further when he developed the idea of the disavowed areas of society as being its collective shadow which he referred to as ‘city shadows’. Usually regarded as negative aspects, the shadow is better thought of as a body of under-currents which can be either negative or positive. In the individual they are expressed through dreams, insights and actions we fail to take responsibility for or view in their proper light. In society they are expressed through gossip, fringe groups, demonstrations, vagrancy and anti-social behaviour. They are collectively, whether individual or of society, expressions that we marginalise and over-look. However, they are also the pool of the sub-conscious where real creativity lies and where the seeds of change germinate and where the ideas that change the world originate.
The problem with real creativity – rather than the ‘variations on a theme’ that represent most of the creative expression we see around us – is that it is uncomfortable. Creativity is basically about breaking the rules, usually the rules of convention or of the paradigm we live by and structure our lives around. It is therefore challenging and disruptive and creates dissent, at least at first; its proponents are told that it can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done. The media may come out against it. Politicians are scared by it; looking back through history, how many creative politicians can you come up with? Perhaps the post-war Attlee government was the most creative in the past century, but it had a country to rebuild, and under such circumstances innovation is easier to promote.
Real change takes place when the shadow is mobilised and comes into the light bringing with it disruption and chaos. Impotent, rational discussion turns into an expression of feeling. Previously marginalised voices speak out and start to be noticed. They may create insurgency, protests and riots and threaten establishment equanimity, demanding change. What happens next depends upon the feelings of society and the validity of the protest. It may be smothered, pushed back into the shadows again or it may grow under the implicit backing of public sympathy. When the latter happens, then government will propose a publicly acceptable change. Where society’s backing for the change is lukewarm, this may be a watered down version that does enough to silence the critics for a while, whilst pushing the guts of the proposal back into the shadows (as has recently happened with access to the lowland countryside) or where the demands are stronger it may bring about some real change – though rarely as much as asked for in the first instance.
Global warming and climatic change are still at the level of impotent discussion and where little change is happening on the ground; sufficient numbers of strong voices are still challenging the evidence and proposed ways forward for political change to be tentative. Solutions are being proposed by politicians, but nothing very radical and there is political fear of the consequences of pushing us too far outside of our collective comfort zone. The Stern Report on the Economic of Climate Change could be a turning point or it could prove to be an anchor. It still clings to the notion of growth as being the only viable economic vehicle. Since the nations and commercial interest of the world are unlikely to accept any other, this may be the sensible option; the only one sufficiently attractive enough to gain any sort of consensus across the globe. Promoting the race to gain economic advantage in a carbon-free society may be the only option we have to create change at a fast enough pace to achieve significant effect. That today’s decision makers will not really see or feel the full consequences of climate change does not help; it is the younger generations that will have to meet it head on. Until the young come to understand the full consequences of what is happening and fully feel the fear of what will happen to them in their future life then there may be just talk. At the moment we are hearing little from them in the media or on the streets. I believe that needs to change dramatically across the globe if momentum for change in to be increased and maintained.
November, 2006
[1]I have drifted into network theory here. Hubs are nodes in the network with very large numbers of links to other nodes. They create a high degree of connectivity in the network creating the ‘small world’ effect – popularly encapsulated within the ‘6 degrees of separation’. Good book on networks is ‘Linked’ by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi; 2003; Penguin ISBN 0-452-28439-2
Title: Some thoughts about psychological issues involved in Climate Change.
Author: Keith Payne
Date: 20 Nov 2006
