Global warming: the pyschology of denial

November 4, 9:35 PMSeattle Environmental Policy ExaminerJean Williams

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Cartoon on global warming denial
Artist Toles public domain

The question has been raised many times in the past few years: what makes some people so adamant about denying global warming and the resulting climate change, when the evidence is so overwhelming?

On July 24, 2009 the White House released a report on climate change and it determined that Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced. Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Forty of the world’s leading climate scientists, including former IPCC chair Sir John Houghton, have called for industrialized countries to make a commitment at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen to cut carbon emissions to at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 “to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that to reach even 450 ppm CO2eq (corresponding to approximately 400 ppm CO2), the emissions of the United States and other developed countries should be reduced by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.1 Thus, to reach 350 ppm CO2, the United States must achieve or exceed the upper end of this range.

So, why are there still so many skeptics and deniers willing to spit into the wind of a mountain of 40 years of scientific evidence?

Personal skepticism about global warming is forged from ideological beliefs and peer beliefs, which result in people gravitating to what ever evidence they can find that reflects those beliefs.

This would explain the popularity of people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and other conservative types, who tend to use their media platform to promote as much misinformation about global warming as possible. 

Global warming deniers tend to exhibit a certain pride in being skeptics and associate it with challenging the government on everything in the percieved need to protect their freedom.

Millions of dollars have been spent by gas, coal, and oil industries to lobby against climate regulations that would cut into their profits.

According to a report by George Marshall, founder of Climatedeniers.org, research indicates that of over 192 books written on climate skepticism, 92% were found to have been associated with, or funded by, right-winged conservative think-tank groups.

In an effort to determine what makes climate deniers tick, Marshall, reported these observations:

1. Disturbing research shows that 60% of people believe that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change”. Thirty per cent of people believe climate change is “largely down to natural causes”, while 7% refuse to accept the climate is changing at all.

2. Nearly 80% of people claim to be concerned about climate change. However, delve deeper and one finds that people have a remarkable tendency to define this concern in ways that keep it as far away as possible. They describe climate change as a global problem (but not a local one) as a future problem (not one for their own lifetimes) and absolve themselves of responsibility for either causing the problem or solving it.

3. In the United States three times more Republicans than Democrats believe that global warming is not an issue and skepticism is rooted in a sustained and well-funded ideological movement.
Cultural anthropologist, Myanna Lahsen, from the University of Colorado explains why some scientists transferred from believer to denier: the largest common factor was the loss of status and respect as a result of years of environmental climate research and they were looking for some way to regain prestige.

One academic study concluded that the denial of climate change has been a careful and deliberate web of fabrication as a tactic of an influential movement against tree hugging environmentalists.

Opposition to scientific advancements and environmental activism comes from people, who don’t want change. They don’t feel that protecting forests, or animals, or waterways, or insects, or plants—should ever happen at the inconvenience of man kind. They don’t see the Earth’s systems as interconnected. They say: so what if species go extinct, forests are clear cut, water ways are polluted, CO2 climbs off the chart, mountains are strip-mined for coal—who cares?

Roman Krznaric, expert on Empathy at The School of Life in London, feels that lack of empathy for other people, who may be experiencing the ravages on climate change on the other side of the world—is part of the problem.

Krznaric wrote on climatedenial.org: Individuals, governments and companies are currently displaying an extraordinary lack of empathy on the issue of climate change. We are ignoring the plight of those whose livelihoods are being destroyed today by the consequences of our high emission levels, particularly distant strangers in developing countries who are affected by floods, droughts and other extreme weather events, such as flood refugees in the Indian state of Orissa.

According to Krznaric, society should also be aware of what kind of planet future generations will inherit from our actions today: We are failing to take the perspective of future generations who will have to live with the detrimental effects of our continuing addiction to lifestyles that result in emissions beyond sustainable levels. Thus there is a lack of empathy through time. We would hardly treat our own family members with such callous disregard and continue acting in ways that we knew (would harm them now or in the future).

In conclusion, the psychology of global warming deniers seems to boil down to one main principle—conservative perception is conservative reality--no matter how much evidence is available to the contrary.

***Copyright Jean Williams 2009