Sir, – In his Unthinkable column, Joe Humphreys addresses the paradox of why people fail to change their behaviour to mitigate climate change given that scientists largely agree that the former causes the latter, while most of us express trust in science (“Unthinkable: Irish people rank highly for trust in science – so why don’t we take climate change more seriously?”, June 30th).
Since human survival may depend on the issue, there are perhaps few more important matters to consider. I would argue, however, that our conduct is very frequently irrational, and that in this case creating incentives to do better will be very difficult.
To take an illustrative example where essentially everyone “trusts the science”, there is all but universal acceptance that if we ate less and exercised more, many of us would feel and look better. Nonetheless, obesity rates are high and increasing globally. This presumably reflects laziness more than scepticism. Imagine though if, in order to get fitter and healthier, you would not alone need to improve your own diet and activity, but would need most of humanity to do the same. I’d wonder how many of us would make such sacrifices if the returns were so unreliable? That reflects the first challenge, that we can only alter our own actions while knowing their impact will be statistically negligible.
Secondly, there is a problem with the timeframe. Alterations we make to our collective lifestyle will likely pay a dividend, but it will be temporally far removed from when we do it. It appears though as if our brains are wired for short-term pay-offs. Thus we crave foods that are laden with energy, guaranteeing short-term survival, rather than those that will benefit us over decades.
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Thinking about climate change requires us to prioritise the world our descendants will live in, thinking in centuries, a difficult way to conduct one’s life.
Given the widespread reluctance of young people to invest in pensions, say, a reluctance to act to help forthcoming generations is unsurprising.
Recognising these practicalities, one might conclude that our politicians need to address them by tweaking tax rates and other variables so as to lead us to minimise harm to the planet. Politics is itself inherently short term though, at least in a functioning democracy.
Such a visionary party would surely not achieve much in terms of short-term popularity, that is, re-election.
Even long term, it is difficult to believe they would. There are presumably many aspects of Irish life for which we ought to thank politicians of the mid-20th century, but few would allocate votes now to thank those of bygone eras for their prescience.
The suggestion, however, that we ought to present the data in a way that “somehow looks as if it’s going to benefit you” may be deeply counterproductive. There are vested interests opposing any policy changes and they will rapidly highlight such misrepresentation.
This could foreseeably jeopardise public belief in science itself, undermining the whole endeavour by bolstering scepticism.
This is, of course, a broad and truly existential question for humanity, if not the planet.
Joe Humphreys raises a matter of enormous importance, with obstacles to progress enmeshed in our nature, psychology and political system. We may need to think very differently to circumvent them.– Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
Sir, – In the course of an article by Joe Humphreys as to why we don’t take climate change more seriously, we learn that pollsters at the Policy Institute at King’s College, London, believe it has something to do with “entrenched cultural values”.
Has it ever!
Current research by US Pew Research Center ranks “White Protestant Evangelicals”, by a significant margin, at 22 per cent, as lowest among those of religious affiliation subscribing to the proposition that human activity contributes in a major way to global climate change. Unaffiliated (ie, non-religious) clock in at 61 per cent.
Is this an indication that the faithful pose a greater threat to humanity, or what? – Yours, etc,
OWEN MORTON,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.