After participating in the panel discussion and listening to different personal opinions and scientific approaches, one thought comes to my mind: after all, are climate change and climate (in)action purely psychological issues? I would like to begin this text by bringing some knowledge that Dr. Isabelle Uhl-Hädecke provided in the panel discussion. Human beings have a basic need to be in control of situations. We can see as a clear example the Pandemic, where fear and anxiety took over people’s life, because they faced the loss of control. It is part of human nature to develop defense mechanisms when we do not feel safe, when we cannot control our surroundings. However, according to the environmental psychologist, there is a way to dissolve the barriers of the human mind: turning the idea of uncontrollable to controllable. In other words, changing the uncertainties into certainties.
One very important discussion in climate debates is communication strategies. How should scientists communicate uncertainty? Is communication a political responsibility? Different ways of communication are different attempts to try to dissolve the public’s defense mechanism to increase climate action. However, this mechanism is deeply rooted in the History of human beings, and now I ask myself ‘Can we change something that is so grounded in the human mindset as fast as climate change happens?’. I would like to give an example to clarify my thoughts.
The term ‘veganism’ was coined in 1944, although the concept of flesh-avoidance was already recorded in the ancient Indian and eastern Mediterranean societies. Meat has been always present in the Man’s diet, parts of our body are designed with shapes and functionalities that facilitate the digestion of meat. Thinking of veganism as a movement that partially goes in the opposite direction of the human biology, there are still people that adopt this diet and lifestyle. But how many? According to a survey conducted in 2020, less than one percent of the entire world’s population consider itself vegan. To put it another way, it took 77 years (or more) for less than one percent of the population to change its habits in a way that is not part of human nature. Keeping this example in mind, I go back to my question: to what extent can strategies of communication, politics and education change the human mind nature within the same time urgency that climate change requires? Our planet does not have 77 years to wait.
Another aspect that is related to human beings’ actions when facing uncertainties is the egocentrism. Among many interpretations, the term ‘egocentrism’ can be understood as the inability to accurately assume or understand any perspective other than one’s own. It is part of the human nature to first return to their own interests and wills, specially in situations of alert and when we are out of our comfort zones. Bringing this idea into the context of climate change, I ask you: how many times have you already heard sentences like ‘I am not going to be alive anyway’ from friends or family? If altruism were greater than self-centeredness within human nature, would actions under uncertain scenarios be different?
With climate change and global warming increasing faster and faster each day, society is gathering its forces to reverse the scenario. Politicians, NGOs, academia, private corporations – all of them trying to work together and find solutions to tackle climate change. Would all this work be worth if the individual human mindset remains the same? I do not know the answer for this question, but I do want to believe that it is yes.
References: https://veganbits.com/vegan-demographics/
Dear Clara,
I really like that you approach the topic from a psychological side, cause I also belive that adressing the topic from this side will help us solve some problems.
But I struggel with your basic accceptance what human nature is. I mean what is nature in gerneral and how well do we (psychologiest, neuroscientist etc.) really understand the human mind/nature?
But I think what you kind of rather adress is, that mankind does definitly not like change, espacially if it is dictated on them. And maybe it is rather time to communicat in a way that most people see that the change induced by climate action is the good kind of change, and by this establish certainties.
How this will work, I also do not know, but I think, and here I refere to the second part of your post that we should not frame mankind as egocentrist, that feels kind of counterproductive. Especially, as we see how selfles people are helping after catastrophes (e.g. the flood in Germany). I think it is time to adress this selfles side of “human nature”, and I think we will be surprised how much suport we will get by doing so.
Seeing the amount of comments for your post, I think I am not the only one who enjoyed it!
Dear Verena,
First I would like to remark that I am not a psychologist or social science student, so all the knowledge on this that I know comes from personal interests on the topic.
While I was writing this post, I had the consciousness that these thoughts are just one side of the coin, and it cannot be generalized to all human beings. Of course people are altruist and helpful to each other as well.
Egocentrism comes to my mind when I think about what brought society to the condition of now a days (climate change). When people or big corporations emit thousand of tons of CO2, or consuming many products wrapped in plastic, they are being selfish (and this I include myself), because it is easir for them if they can travel by plane or buy a pinapple already cut into a plastic recipient – or in terms of private corporations for examples, they want to make money and keep emitting CO2 because their capital is more important.
I thank you very much for your comment, and I believe it could be a long discussion 🙂
Dear Clara,
thank you for your thoughts! I was, however, wondering whether the comparison with veganism is suitable here. I do agree that veganism is somehow going against human nature, but wouldn’t you agree that trying to reduce consumption, shopping more regionally, taking the train instead of an airplane is going back to one’s origins? I feel like our current state of living is the unnatural one – and it was only a matter of time until we realized that.
While I do think that changing habits is difficult, I have faith that the transitioning into a sustainable state of society will be easier than anticipated and will leave everyone happier than before.
Dear Luisa,
Yes, I agree with you, that is why I wrote in the text that BIOLOGICALLY veganism goes against human nature. In terms of the consumption for example, I completelly agree that we are not in our natural way, it is not natural to produce tons of plastics per day.
I also hope people will realize that we are not living in the right way as soon as possible 🙂
Dear Clara,
thanks for your post, very well written. I agree with Ximena on the point on ‘ there is a huge difference between conceptually understanding a perspective, and actually living such a perspective.’ . I guess that people can understand it, but what also plays a major role in my opinion is that people don’t see all the suffering around the world, just like the motto: out of sight out of mind. When people would get more confronted by climate change disasters in the news, the awareness and the will to change something would be bigger. Everyone sees now in Germany the news about the floods and has an urge to help, wants climate action now, proper climate policy in Germany for the next election. But nobody shows pictures in the news of the people in Madagascar dying of starvation. So why would people care for global climate policy, global efforts and changes to help those people, too, if they don’t even see it in the news and get confronted with it?
It was really interesting and appealing to read your post Clara! Thank you.
I agree with the different behaviors you mentioned on humans beings. I would like to add that as part of what you display as ‘egocentrism’ (the inability to understand a different perspective than your own), it might also be that even if I understand other people’s perspectives, I am not feeling or going through it like them. And I believe there is a huge difference between conceptually understanding a perspective, and actually living such a perspective. There are always missing pieces between ‘understanding’ what someone is going through, and being on that person’s skin. I was reading a book that said: ‘A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people.’ And it really left me wondering how true this can be.
Anyways, I just wanted to share this thought with you. 🙂