Why We Care But Don’t Act: Understanding The Human Barriers To Climate Action
You don’t have to look very far to find evidence of the size and urgency of the challenge that is global warming. A recent article in the Economist (September 2020) points out:
“Net emissions have grown by 40% over the past 30 years. Meeting the Paris goals will necessitate a 90% fall from the current COVID-struck levels over the next 30 years. Yet during that time world population is expected to rise by 2bn and gross product may triple. It follows that the world economy, which still generates over four-fifths of its energy consumption from fossil fuels, must change dramatically.”
Yet, despite the clear need for action, progress on climate change remains painfully slow. Politicians dither. Around the world commitment to climate and emissions targets are inconsistent at best. The fossil fuel ‘industrial-complex’ works in whatever way it can to obfuscate on the issue, all the while running its ‘jobs and growth’ narrative – aimed at preserving the status quo.
A recent Guardian podcast (“What MPs Really Think About The Climate Crisis”) traces a lack of political action on climate change to a lack of interest in the electorate. Ordinary people, it concludes, are just not sufficiently engaged with or passionate about climate change to encourage politicians to act.
Perhaps this is understandable in the context of the COVID crisis, which, as a clear and present health danger to millions, is demanding such urgent and universal attention from all levels of society. But even before the pandemic our collective societal attitude to global warming wasn’t leading to great progress. As an issue, global warming lacks many of the features of the COVID crisis that have driven such immediate (albeit in many cases misguided) action.
As a social researcher I have explored global warming in qualitative research extensively over the past couple of years, speaking to hundreds of people about the issue on behalf of my clients – sometimes environmental groups, sometimes corporations. What emerges are a series of barriers people use to justify inaction on climate change.
The barriers can be summed up by the classic television series Yes Prime Minister in a scene in which the infamously obstructive Sir Humphrey Appleby and a government official describe the standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.
“In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.”
In stage two we say something might be going to happen, but we should do nothing about it”
In stage three we say maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.”
In stage four we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now”
People typically play back one or more of these themes to justify inaction. Let’s take a look at each of the barriers in more detail as closer examination reveals which is the key to driving the required behaviour change on climate change and how this might be done.
Stage One
“We Say Nothing Is Going To Happen”
Climate Change Is Not Real
For years we have had climate change denial – the earth isn’t really getting warmer or it is getting warmer as part of natural variations in temperature that are not linked to human fossil fuel consumption. At home and abroad governments and vested interests still peddle denial of the reality of climate change. There are many, especially those with links to the fossil fuel industry, who have run this argument. Increasingly however, the science of climate change is being widely accepted and is also backed up by our own experience of bushfires and extreme temperatures around the world. Denial was the initial reaction to COVID-19 too. It’s a familiar early reaction to crisis until reality starts to hit you in the face. However, increasingly it seems as that most of us have now accept that global warming is happening and that it is caused by human behaviour. Although we can’t ignore this barrier (it is frequently used as a political justification), it is not the biggest stumbling block any more – in Australia at least.
Stage Two
“We Say Something May Be Happening, But We Should Do Nothing About It”
Climate Change Isn’t Pressing Or Urgent
This barrier refers to the lack of willingness to believe that something should be done to address climate change, that it is an issue worthy of urgent and immediate action.
This perspective accepts that climate change is happening, however the assumption is that the result will not be felt in any meaningful way for a long time and is too remote to inspire action. In this view climate change and global warming will be a problem for future generations and while this is regrettable, it is not something I need to worry about right now. Perhaps surprisingly there are still 27% of Australians who do not believe that climate change represents a problem for them personally - according to the ABC Climate Change, Survey 2020. People are notoriously bad when it comes to making decisions that might require sacrifices today in order to realise future gains tomorrow – even more so when the gains are perceived as being generations away.
This ‘not in my lifetime’ perspective is now being challenged by the Australian and, more recently, the Californian bushfires of 2020. These events, and the prospect of more to follow have started to change perception of the immediacy and consequences of global warming. 79% of people affected by the bushfires in some way believe climate change is making things worse (Australia Institute Survey 2020). It is sinking in that the effects of global warming are happening now, not at some vague time in the future and they are happening around me, not just to polar bears and low-lying Pacific Islands. Having our capital cities choked with smoke for days at a time is evidence to anyone that something is wrong and that action is required. Yes, there have been some who have argued that the bushfires are not related to global warming, but the majority of people seem to accept that what we are seeing with these fires is unprecedented and it is related to man-made global warming.
However, although the same survey reported that 56% of Australians believe global warming is “a serious and pressing problem”, this represents a decline of 5% from 2019. Further, climate change ranked only fifth highest of potential threats to Australia’s vital interests in the same poll. Driving greater intention to tackle climate change is a pressure point that could be tackled by communication - bringing home to people in society the likely impacts of global warming on their own life in the here and now (and the irreversibility of what is happening if we don’t act). Dust clouds, reductions in food availability, the rise of new diseases, a break down in the global supply chain and its impact on economies could all be used to paint a picture of what life would be like as the world heats up.
Stage Three
“We Say Maybe We Should Do Something, But There’s Nothing We Can Do”
Climate Change Isn’t My Problem
This is really the big issue and problem for action on climate change. There are many who want to tackle climate change and feel immediacy about the problem, but they don’t actually do anything about it.
Why? There are a few explanations for this. First, the issue seems so big and vast that people often feel helpless. How can I do anything as one person and what would I actually do anyway? Climate change can seem so daunting that people feel powerless to act on their own. Rather than taking any of the myriad individual actions they could take, many people are quick to defer to governments and corporation to drive change (without subsequently applying any political or consumer pressure).
Part of the issue here may be the way the climate change debate is often framed in the media. The climate change narrative is framed in terms of the need to reduce global emissions and the semiotics are the planet itself, polar ice caps, large industrial smoke stacks, international talks and treaties accompanied by a vocabulary of trading schemes, scientific jargon and the like. It is all very big, international and in the world of geo-politics. Rarely is the debate couched directly in terms of our local and personal fossil fuel or energy consumption or the actions we might take in response. This makes it easier for us to blame governments and corporations and to defer to them for solutions in terms of climate accords, policy, legislation and innovation. But as Sir Humphrey from Yes, Prime Ministermight say, things don’t happen just because people are keen on them.
Stage Four
“We Say Maybe We Could Have Done Something, But It’s Too Late Now”
Climate Change Is Just Inevitable
There is another rationalisation I hear on climate change – that the problem is so big and so far gone that that there is nothing we can do to reverse what is happening.
We have to just accept our fate and find a way to live through it the best we can. This view is easier to adopt when people believe the consequences of global warming are not severe or will only become so in the distant future. Fatalism is also easier to fall into when people believe the problem is out of their hands. This doesn’t seem like a widely adopted barrier at the moment, but it could easily become more potent over time if we don’t make progress on climate change and global temperatures do in fact reach a tipping point beyond which clawing back the effects of global warming would be difficult. Interestingly, the reported bounce back in some parts of the natural world during COVID-19 (being able to see the Himalayas again in some parts of India because of reduced pollution levels) has given some people faith that it is not too late to undo the damage that is being done to our climate.
So what can we do to address these barriers? While action on any of the four barriers to climate action would help, it is the failure of accountability and our ‘perceived powerlessness’ that seems like it could be an area of focus to drive social change. In society today we have a remarkable ability to display doublethink when it comes to fossil fuels. Where personal accountability is latent or not drawn out in sharp relief, it’s all too easy for right and wrong to be swept under the carpet or given to someone else to deal with. This is where we are with fossil fuels today - we know it’s a problem, but we just don’t feel it enough in our own day to day behaviour.
What we need is a new narrative for climate action, one that reframes the issue in a way that encourage individuals to be accountable. It should present climate change as an issue of immediate concern caused by industries and corporations, but also driven by a consumer culture that is complicit in global warming. A new narrative would emphasis the severity of the impact in the here and now, and challenge all of us to take on responsibility for the problem instead of deferring to government and industry. It would emphasise the need for us to take action in whatever way we can not just as consumers, but as citizens, employees, owners, inventors, teachers, entrepreneurs, investors and advocates. It is a willingness to take on accountability for climate action ourselves that is missing today. There is still time for us to turn this around.