The newspaper suggests that it has been a failure on the part of politicians to persuade the public. Last week Bjorn Lomborg wrote in The Spectator that even the environmentally friendly Australians rate the problem as less serious and pressing than they have previously thought. Indeed their new opposition leader Tony Abbott has been very out-spoken in opposition to climate change. Surprisingly, in the notably sceptical United States, despite the urgings of many high profile deniers such as Sarah Palin, as many as a third of Americans think that humans have made a contribution to climate change. This is fewer than in the UK; but not by much, and it’s not enough. So why do a majority refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening? And why do so many people prefer to believe that humans are blameless?
Simplistically, by rejecting the notion of man-made climate change, an individual may feel absolved of responsibility. If I see climate change as a myth, or even if I accept it but regard it as a natural change, I can argue that there is nothing to be done. People in the West seem to regard their use of energy as an entitlement to continue with business as usual, rather than accepting a responsibility to conserve. The consumptive practices of people in our society lies at the root of carbon emissions. Businesses will always act to meet market demands, and politicians seldom actually influence opinion, merely represent what they hope will be the majority views of their constituents. If we want to see real change in emissions levels the responsibility, like charity, begins at home. Professor David Uzzell speaking at a special event on climate change hosted by the British Psychological Society said that: “Neither technological fixes nor financial instruments alone will suffice. Even when these can play a role, their effectiveness is usually mediated by the way the public understands, interprets, engages with or responds to such actions.”
So you might think that my contention is that emissions are bad. People cause emissions through their insatiable squandering of energy. Therefore people are bad. But that’s not what I’m saying exactly. The logic holds to some extent but the final statement should be: Therefore people should learn to change. But how? Surely people read the papers; surely they watch the news; hasn’t the message been delivered clearly enough already? Maybe clarity isn’t the only criterion. Psychology has a great deal to offer in terms of understanding how and why people think and behave the way they do. It has taught us that behaviour is motivated and influenced by our core beliefs and attitudes. In fact the success of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy rests on the very principles that express how our attitudes and perceptions give rise to thoughts and emotional responses. Thoughts cause emotions and emotions cause thoughts. What this tells us is that behaviour will not change unless we truly accept the rationale for change at the level of our core beliefs and in a way that allows our emotional reactions to be consistent with these beliefs. And this is not always easy.
Core beliefs aren’t simply rational, evidence-based concepts. They are emotional attitude states that are usually reinforced by a selective reading of the ‘facts’ as we see them. And this is normal behaviour, not a dysfunctional misinterpretation of reality. The healthy mind needs core beliefs; they anchor our personality and guide our behaviour. When there is a deviation between core beliefs and behaviour we can experience stress and anxiety. If unchecked this can lead to depression and other forms of mental ill health. In fact there are inbuilt defence mechanisms to nudge us back and to keep behaviour and beliefs aligned. Cognitive dissonance arises when we have conflicts between thoughts and behaviour. This is a feeling of unease about the inconsistency, and it can be experienced as anxiety, anger, guilt, or even shame. Such negative emotions are unpleasant and so there is an automatic motivation to reduce them. Take a simple, everyday example. I may buy something that I believe to be a bargain only to be confronted by evidence that I’ve paid too much. Now as a rational person I don’t want to think I’ve been misled or swindled. So I will seek to diminish the feelings of foolishness or annoyance by creating a rationale for my decision: the shop has better after-sales service, or the sales person was attractive, etc. That way I can acknowledge the ‘mistake’ but justify it in terms that allows my self esteem to remain intact.
By accepting the reality of man-made climate change we might argue that a rational person will logically feel compelled to do something to lessen the problem. But do what? Recycle? Bicycle to work? Turn off the lights or the central heating? Make your young children walk to school? On the face of it all of these options and others are possible and easy to do. But they may have consequences for our everyday life that involve increased effort or inconvenience. So we may perceive doing these things as a bother. We may even feel duped: why should I do this when next door has his house plastered in energy consuming Christmas lights? As David Uzzell says, “...we can’t expect people to change their behaviour without changing the conditions that influence behaviour.”
We are all governed by our sense of identity and our desire for a certain lifestyle. If we expect people collectively to change to a more sustainable form of living we need to help them by making the arguments connect with their motivations and sense of self. The conditions for behavioural influence are strongly affected by the emotional salience of arguments. Some of the resistance to climate change arguments arises from the fact that much of the information people receive comes from a media perceived to be alarmist and politicians who are distrusted. In addition, people perceive the risks to be distant in time and in place. Change will take decades or the hurricanes are far away. But it’s also affected by our belief in the impact of action; what I do can’t matter. And an element of selfishness; I’m not doing it unless he does it too. Most people see governments and others as more responsible for dealing with the consequences of climate change.
More significantly, perhaps the reason that there is so much denial of man-made climate change is because the arguments for it have less emotional salience than the arguments against. The arguments for are typically presented in the probabilistic and qualified language of science. This may be technically correct but lacks emotional impact and may not be accessible to all. By contrast the arguments of denial are charged with emotion. They also seize on any equivocation in the scientific message (such as the recent email leaks) to demonstrate the ‘weakness’ of the scientific case. So it’s easy to see why the case for denial appears to be winning. And this is also emotionally attractive. If there is no climate change or if human behaviour isn’t involved, then I can maintain my lifestyle of choice free of any guilt. To help people to accept the personal responsibility to conserve means connecting with the personally emotive aspects of the arguments. With the help of the work being done now by psychologists I hope that the message for positive action to mitigate climate change can be given greater emotional force and plausibility. For the policies emerging from Copenhagen to succeed it will be necessary to create a more receptive climate for change in behaviour.
Post script: If you would like to know more about the evidence for climate change please look at the excellent book by Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate change – Is time running out?, published by Bloomsbury in 2006. You can also find an accessible introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in the recent book by Stephen Briers, Brilliant Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: How to use CBT to improve your mind and your life, published by Prentice Hall in 2009.
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