Responding to the Threat of Climate Change
March 23, 2009 10:46AM
Dan Gilbert, of the Hedonic Psychology Laboratory at Harvard University, speaks at Pop!Tech 2007 on why the threat of climate change fails to trigger alarms.
- Climate Change Lacks a Human Face. Our brains are constantly on the look out for any sign of human agency. The smallest intentional action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn’t. If climate change were some sort of nefarious plot, visited on us by very bad men, then our President would have us fighting a war on warming, with or without Congressional approval.
- Climate Change Does Not Violate Moral Sensibilities. Moral emotions are the brain’s call to action. Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex or by the practice of eating puppies, millions of Americans would be massing in the streets.
- Climate Change Is Not Perceived as an Immediate Threat. Like every other animal, we respond to clear and present danger. We haven't gotten the knack of treating the future like the present because we have only been practicing for a couple of million years.
- Climate Change Proceeds at a Gradual Rate. The brain is sensitive to relative changes, not to absolute changes. That is why you can see a candle being lit in a dark room, but you can't see three candles being lit in a bright room. And when the rate of change in a stimulus is slow enough, that change goes undetected. Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept changes that we would not accept if they happened suddenly. One day at a time, we have transformed our world into an ecological nightmare that our grandparents would never have tolerated. But for most of us, it is simply “business as usual” — because each day is not dramatically different than the one before.
Note that I have abridged Gilbert's words without the use of ellipses. Gilbert's point about rate-of-change perceptions is captured in the phrase shifting baselines. This video has been discussed a couple of times at La Marguerite.
