People are always motivated when it comes to avoiding danger. You run away if you step into the street and a bus is coming at you from behind. You stay inside if a sizable strange dog is growling outside your front door. Why is it so difficult to convince people to take action on climate change if people are motivated to prevent dangers to their existence? Unfortunately, a number of concerns related to climate change make it challenging for people to get engaged.
First, combating climate change requires people to make the most difficult trade-off possible between immediate and long-term gains. Years of research on temporal discounting have shown that we overvalue short-term rewards in comparison to long-term benefits. People do not save enough money for retirement because they would rather spend it now than have it later in life.
In the time being, it is advantageous for both people and organizations to ignore climate change. If people choose to disregard the impact their carbon footprint has on the world, they are not required to make changes to the vehicles they drive, the goods they purchase, or the residences they live in. If companies do not need to create new methods to reduce carbon emissions, they can continue to produce goods at lower costs. Governments can save money by relying on combustion-based power generation techniques rather than creating and advancing green energy sources, even ones that are more cost-efficient in the long run.
Secondly, the issue of climate change is nonlinear. People are quite skilled at evaluating linear trends. Without a spreadsheet, it is simple to consider the impact that $5 spent each day on coffee has on your weekly budget.
Similar to this, it took a while before people could clearly see any symptoms of climate change. Dangers that escalate swiftly and nonlinearly do not work well with people; they work much better with threats that are clear, like the ugly dog at the door.
Thirdly, many effects of climate change are far from most people. Research on construal level theory indicate that people understand objects that are psychologically distant from them more abstractly than those that are psychologically close. Wildfires and extreme storms are two examples of weather catastrophes that frequently occur far from where most people live. These catastrophes are likely a result of climate change, because of this, most people are free to regard climate change as an abstract idea rather than having to deal with its specifics. Specific conceptions simply compel people to act more strongly than abstract ones do.
Another point to note is that future events are always more unpredictable than current ones. People cherish the present so much more because of this, in part. After all, there is no assurance that you will live long enough to enjoy your retirement, even if you save a lot of money for it. There are others who doubt the likelihood that human activity’s impact on the environment will result in the disastrous outcomes some scientists have predicted in the case of climate change.
There is hope even though all of these things are working against us. There are a few things you can do, whether you’re trying to convince others (or organizations) to take action or trying to convince yourself to engage in more activities that lessen your impact on the climate.
Reducing the psychological distance will help you feel the specifics of a daily life disrupted by a change in the climate by mentally bringing the future closer. You and others won’t be motivated to take measures that require more work today, like cycling to work, until you and others feel this future threat in the here and now .
It is also beneficial to face the future’s uncertainties head-on. Think about the likelihood that global climate change is genuine if you doubts that human activity is changing the climate. Most doubters agree there is at least some potential that human activity is altering the climate.
You can also start a thoughtful conversation on values among your co-workers and inside your company. An evaluation might state that options for the present are more valuable than those for the future. Additionally, the word evaluation contains the word value, which denotes that a set of values is assumed.
In the end, we must be prepared to be transparent about the ideals we are acting on. It is a choice of values that we rarely like to make directly if we choose to improve our lives in the present at the expense of the quality of life for future generations. To live our lives selfishly and without consideration for the lives of our children and grandchildren. We must alter our behaviour right now if we are not prepared to accept that selfish value.
