Climate Change: What I've Learned So Far
Oct. 10th, 2010 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashnistrikeSomewhere over the course of the last year, I've moved from "studying sustainable behavior as one application of cognitive psychology" to "learning everything I can about climate change and sustainability." This is all in service of the meta: the central climate change problem is a psychological one. People do things that make the problem worse, or don't do things to improve it, because of what's going on in their heads. Maybe they don't believe the problem exists, or they think the costs of doing something are too severe. Maybe they don't think any action they can take will do any good. So I need to know the baseline facts in order to know what accurate, action-provoking mental states might look like. Here are some things I've learned:
-The causes of climate change are simple. We know exactly what sorts of emissions cause it, and what the sources are. We know that reducing those emissions would not only address climate change, but improve human health, and end up with more of the world's energy being produced by democratic countries with some vague notion of human rights. We know that these changes in energy sources need to be made eventually, because the current sources will eventually run out. We know that the longer we delay these changes, the more they will cost. We know that longer delays would still allow us to compensate for climate change effects, but would also be much more expensive.
-The effects of climate change are complicated. Raise the average global temperature, and the effects on weather and climate vary from place to place. Some places will actually get colder, some of the time. In the Midwest, we expect a longer growing season, but with less rain, and shorter winters with more snow compressed into more extreme storms. In parallel with atmospheric effects, the ocean temperature changes at a different rate, along with acidity. Ocean and air temperature interact in only semi-predictable ways. There is genuine controversy over the effect on hurricanes and other major storms--maybe there will be more of them, maybe fewer but more extreme.
-Systems theory is crack, even when the system in question is your own planetary climate. Everything interacts with everything else in a way that is both scary and beautiful.
-Humans react badly to fear. We would rather "understand" a situation than be right about it. We'd rather be wrong than lose something we care about. The people most likely to deny climate change are those whose career and status depend on the current energy infrastructure. The way around this is to offer them outs. Some of these are useful--getting oil companies to start making money off of wind power is good. Some are greenwashing--getting massive polluters to improve their office recycling rate isn't exactly bad, but it's not exactly addressing the core issue either. Meanwhile, some of the people who believe there's a problem also believe it's too late to do anything about it, which is an excellent way of making it too late to do anything about it. People who feel helpless likewise need outs--things that can be done that are affordable for the recession-pressed household. (Two of the things we do in Chez Emrys are eat vegetarian a couple nights a week, which saves money, and bother our representatives, which is free but requires some sensible limit on frequency for our and their sanities. Plus I study how to influence the other 6.5 billion people.)
What I really wanted to write about here was one particular mistake that people make: we try to fit climate change into the boxes that older apocalypses came in. And I discovered that I needed an introductory post. So that one will be after dinner or tomorrow, depending on how much of a mess we make with dinner.
-The causes of climate change are simple. We know exactly what sorts of emissions cause it, and what the sources are. We know that reducing those emissions would not only address climate change, but improve human health, and end up with more of the world's energy being produced by democratic countries with some vague notion of human rights. We know that these changes in energy sources need to be made eventually, because the current sources will eventually run out. We know that the longer we delay these changes, the more they will cost. We know that longer delays would still allow us to compensate for climate change effects, but would also be much more expensive.
-The effects of climate change are complicated. Raise the average global temperature, and the effects on weather and climate vary from place to place. Some places will actually get colder, some of the time. In the Midwest, we expect a longer growing season, but with less rain, and shorter winters with more snow compressed into more extreme storms. In parallel with atmospheric effects, the ocean temperature changes at a different rate, along with acidity. Ocean and air temperature interact in only semi-predictable ways. There is genuine controversy over the effect on hurricanes and other major storms--maybe there will be more of them, maybe fewer but more extreme.
-Systems theory is crack, even when the system in question is your own planetary climate. Everything interacts with everything else in a way that is both scary and beautiful.
-Humans react badly to fear. We would rather "understand" a situation than be right about it. We'd rather be wrong than lose something we care about. The people most likely to deny climate change are those whose career and status depend on the current energy infrastructure. The way around this is to offer them outs. Some of these are useful--getting oil companies to start making money off of wind power is good. Some are greenwashing--getting massive polluters to improve their office recycling rate isn't exactly bad, but it's not exactly addressing the core issue either. Meanwhile, some of the people who believe there's a problem also believe it's too late to do anything about it, which is an excellent way of making it too late to do anything about it. People who feel helpless likewise need outs--things that can be done that are affordable for the recession-pressed household. (Two of the things we do in Chez Emrys are eat vegetarian a couple nights a week, which saves money, and bother our representatives, which is free but requires some sensible limit on frequency for our and their sanities. Plus I study how to influence the other 6.5 billion people.)
What I really wanted to write about here was one particular mistake that people make: we try to fit climate change into the boxes that older apocalypses came in. And I discovered that I needed an introductory post. So that one will be after dinner or tomorrow, depending on how much of a mess we make with dinner.
