3 ms·

Why aren’t we more scared of the climate crisis? It’s complicated

6 points by myshpa 3y ago

h2odragon 3y ago
30+ years of "imminent doom!" headlines have eroded any sense of urgency. Some people even remember time before the "Climate Crisis", when there were other reasons to fear imminent doom! any day now... none of those panned out either.
- matttproud 3y ago
  About the same kind of statement as: „Gosh golly. I wish the Surgeon General warned against smoking 30 years ago; I’d maybe have stopped before the cancer.“ I felt the same as you for a long time: deeply cynical. Feeling and seeing the impact of this first-hand woke me up fast.
chewz 3y ago
> The key to any good con is to persuade the mark (victim) that it's not a con.
sys_64738 3y ago
It depends where you live.
JazzyEssy 3y ago
Probably has to do with Phycological distance? The climate crisis might seem distant and disconnected from our daily lives for many individuals. People often find it difficult to associate their immediate actions with the global implications of climate change, leading to a lack of personal connection to the issue.
- RGamma 3y ago
  It's not necessarily far away. It's diffuse. Unless you are educated about climate or ecosystem dynamics to contextualize your lived experience in a wider (space/time) scope many will use faulty heuristics and faulty memory to rationalize or ignore it any way they want. This might be an issue that's ingrained deeply into our limited biological computing machinery/wetware. And this is also Great Filter material... http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html
goku12 3y ago
Helplessness is one big factor. Why worry about something you can't change? Climate change needed massive actions that even determined individuals can't enforce. Yet, many governments and corporations (especially the energy sector) are behaving like everything is fine. Climate change can't be controlled (much less reversed) without all of these big players falling in line. Yet, some still invest in climate misinformation despite the overwhelming number of red signals in nature. Even when citizens protest, we see them suppressed with money power. At this point, many have accepted that they are inevitable victims of insurmountable human greed.

6 points by myshpa 3y ago

30+ years of "imminent doom!" headlines have eroded any sense of urgency. Some people even remember time before the "Climate Crisis", when there were other reasons to fear imminent doom! any day now... none of those panned out either.

matttproud 3y ago
About the same kind of statement as: „Gosh golly. I wish the Surgeon General warned against smoking 30 years ago; I’d maybe have stopped before the cancer.“ I felt the same as you for a long time: deeply cynical. Feeling and seeing the impact of this first-hand woke me up fast.

chewz 3y ago

> The key to any good con is to persuade the mark (victim) that it's not a con.

sys_64738 3y ago

It depends where you live.

JazzyEssy 3y ago

Probably has to do with Phycological distance? The climate crisis might seem distant and disconnected from our daily lives for many individuals. People often find it difficult to associate their immediate actions with the global implications of climate change, leading to a lack of personal connection to the issue.

RGamma 3y ago
It's not necessarily far away. It's diffuse. Unless you are educated about climate or ecosystem dynamics to contextualize your lived experience in a wider (space/time) scope many will use faulty heuristics and faulty memory to rationalize or ignore it any way they want. This might be an issue that's ingrained deeply into our limited biological computing machinery/wetware. And this is also Great Filter material... http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html

goku12 3y ago

Helplessness is one big factor. Why worry about something you can't change? Climate change needed massive actions that even determined individuals can't enforce. Yet, many governments and corporations (especially the energy sector) are behaving like everything is fine. Climate change can't be controlled (much less reversed) without all of these big players falling in line. Yet, some still invest in climate misinformation despite the overwhelming number of red signals in nature. Even when citizens protest, we see them suppressed with money power. At this point, many have accepted that they are inevitable victims of insurmountable human greed.