Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

An insightful interview with George Marshall, author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to ignore Climate Change.  In his own words..

Throughout the Anglophone world  there is a dangerous political polarization around climate change. In one particularly disturbing US poll, attitudes to climate change were a better predictor of respondents’ political orientation than any other issue- including gun control, abortion and capital punishment. Denial of climate change is not just an opinion, it has become a dominant mark of people’s political identity.

This is no small problem. People with conservative values (some of whom may also vote for centre-left parties) constitute the majority in almost all countries. In US surveys people who identify strongly with these values outnumber those who identify with liberal/left values by a factor of 2:1.

In my book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, I argued that climate change exists for us in the form of socially constructed narratives built upon our values and identity. It is these narratives- not the underlying science or even the evidence of our own eyes- that leads us to accept or reject the issue.

Unfortunately one of the dominant values in the climate movement is a disregard , if not outright contempt, for the right-leaning mainstream and their concerns. Activists often talk with disgust of the selfishness, greed and stupidity of conservatives. This is intolerant and unpleasant. The denigration conveniently ignores the diversity of opinion and life experience among conservatives. A struggling rural family, an elderly Christian on a small pension, a community shopkeeper and a Wall Street Banker are combined into one faceless enemy.

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