Cook on low heat

Why is it hard for us to grasp the dangers of global warming? New research shows how our psychology affects the way we relate to the threat of climate change

Tehila Mishor, Angle - news agency for science and the environment

It is said that if you throw a frog into a pot full of boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in tap water and light the fire under the pot, it will just stay there inert and get used to the water getting hotter and hotter until the temperature becomes lethal.

It is hoped that none of the readers will decide to carry out this cruel experiment at home, but according to an article recently published by an Israeli researcher, it is hard not to think that when it comes to global warming - we are the frogs in the story.

Many studies in the fields of psychology and the study of rationality have long led us to the understanding that our ability to assess danger and respond to it is not the result of facts and rational analysis alone, but also of psychological, perceptual, emotional, and other factors that enter the equation and influence the decisions we make. High blood pressure, for example, greatly endangers health, but the absence of symptoms in those who suffer from it - even if they know they suffer - reduces their sense of danger, and therefore the serious attitude towards treatment; This is compared to less dangerous, but more noticeable diseases, which make patients worry and rush them to the doctor.

A disturbing fact concerning the threat of global warming, as emerges from the article by Dr. Nurit Karmi, head of the program for social and environmental studies at Tel Hai Academic College, is that an analysis of the characteristics of the climate threat shows that in each and every one of its characteristics it tends to make us reduce its severity: all the psychological mechanisms Ours seem to combine together to lead us to underestimate one of the greatest risks currently facing humanity.

Our ability to assess risk is closely related to how familiar we are with its consequences. Photo: Oxfam International, Flickr
Our ability to assess risk is closely related to how familiar we are with its consequences. Photo: Oxfam International, Flickr
warming? by me? No way!
Karmi reviews and summarizes in her article, which was recently published in the magazine "Ecology and Environment", the results of dozens of studies that dealt with the big question: Why does the public hesitate to respond to the danger of global warming, which scientists warn about again and again? What is the source of the gap between the seriousness that the scientific community attributes to the state of affairs, and the relative indifference the issue receives from the general public and from the global leadership as well? Although we recently witnessed a historic change - hopefully - at the climate conference in Paris, one still has to wonder how the world leadership has only now risen to mobilize for action, or at least for an attempt to act. What, then, are the psychological barriers that prevent us from fully sensing the danger of climate change?

First of all, Carmi explains, global warming is a new and unprecedented threat. Our ability to assess risk is closely related to our familiarity with its consequences and our personal experience with it. "A person who has experienced the realization of a threat - will assess it as more serious," explains Karmi, "and the fact that most people have not yet experienced 'in the flesh' the significant systemic harm that the main scientific bodies in the world warn against, makes it difficult to perceive the threat as very serious." Similarly, the fact that the risk is inclusive, and not local or personal, and endangers not necessarily me and those close to me but perhaps rather large populations far away from me, reduces the emotional involvement necessary to develop a significant sense of danger.

Another factor is the uncertainty factor. The very terms "risk" or "threat" indicate uncertainty. Climatic phenomena are extremely complex systems, and the scientific models that analyze them, accordingly, do not yield unequivocal results, but probabilistic results. Hence the phrases that frequently appear in the researchers' conclusions, phrases such as "with a high probability" or "potential", which make readers take them with less seriousness. Probabilistic formulations, which do not give yes-or-no answers, are seen by many as evidence of the limitations of scientific research, and not as arising from the uncertainty inherent in the natural systems themselves.

The emotional involvement is greater when there is someone to blame. Photo: DB Young, Flickr
The emotional involvement is greater when there is someone to blame. Photo: DB Young, Flickr
A faceless threat
The periods of time in question also instill complacency. Although scientists base their research on climate changes observed today, the main damage is still ahead of us, and the threat is not immediate. The researchers are talking about damages that concern mainly future generations, which will not necessarily be discovered in the lifetime of a single person. Human survival mechanisms, as designed during evolution, encourage us to favor strategies that increase short-term profits at the expense of concern and responsibility for long-term developments. Furthermore, the global warming process is slow and gradual, similar to what happens in the water pot of the frogs we opened with. The changes are so slow that they pass "under the radar" of our sensory perception.

Furthermore, in our daily life we ​​are used to feeling in the span of a single day much greater temperature changes than those predicted by researchers during global warming. Our daily experience makes it difficult for us, therefore, to appreciate the magnitude of the danger inherent in a rise of three degrees in 50 years, while we are used to a much greater difference in hours. The intangibility also concerns the causes of warming: greenhouse gases are odorless or colourless, and therefore remain abstract and difficult to perceive for the general public.

Indeed, it is not surprising to see that in areas where climate change is more extreme and its effects are already felt today, larger parts of the public are aware of the danger and the changes it will bring about in their lives. This is the case in Australia, for example, where 90 percent of the public agrees that climate change will affect sea level rise, and at the same time local authorities are also much busier planning for these changes.

Finally, researchers show that there is a distinct human tendency to treat man-made dangers more seriously compared to dangers originating from natural forces, especially when it comes to an identified person, with malicious intent. Global warming, although the scientific consensus states that it is the result of human factors, still continues to be perceived as a "natural phenomenon", and in any case is not linked to a specific person and malicious intent. Here again the need for an emotional response plays against us in order to develop a sense of danger: the absence of a "guilty" that is easy to point the finger at, and certainly an agent with malicious intent, reduces the emotional involvement, and therefore reduces the severity attributed to the risk.

Safety first
And what about Israel? Does the perception of the threat of global warming have unique characteristics in our country? In a conversation with her, Karmi expresses the explanation that the constant "security situation" that prevails in Israel has an effect on the little place that the climate issue occupies on the public agenda here. Among the various barriers, the factor of immediacy takes on a central role here: in our troubled reality, there is always a more burning, urgent and immediate threat that demands attention and pushes other issues.

The global nature of the threat is also a significant obstacle for Israeli society, which is so immersed in its "here and now" and tends to diverge as well as to the approach of "the poor of your city before". Karmi mentions that the main report from the Paris climate change conference in the Israeli media concerned the handshake between Netanyahu and Abu Mazen, and sees this as further evidence of the bias of local priorities.

Well, what does all this leave us with? The field of environmental psychology, Karmi summarizes in her article, assumes that in order to bring about a change in behavior we must better understand human nature and what motivates and activates it. Perhaps if we understand what prevents us from taking the threat of global warming seriously we can bring ourselves, the global public, to finally recognize the danger and jump into action before the pot boils.