Since the
climate change movement began in the 1970s, it has been controversial. It was
originally supported by often eccentric “hippies,” then a grass-roots campaign,
and is now largely mainstream. However, industrialists and capitalist have
always countered it. Despite the scientific community’s collective agreement
that climate change is occurring and is also human-induced, there is still a
passionate movement of skeptics of various backgrounds that refuse to believe
this for a variety of reasons. Prominent
environmental advocate Christopher Stone denies that climate change skepticism
poses a threat to the environmental movement, claiming, in fact, that the
American public is well educated on the topic. He writes with respect to the
environmental movement that, “As far as ‘educating’ the public is concerned,
apparently the US public is getting the message” (Stone 157). Stone
believes that the environmental movement is strong (Stone 141) and concludes,
“Thus, while the environmentalists might do well to keep image in mind, I doubt
they have an image they need to run away from, or for that matter could run
away from…” (Stone 156). In
spite of Stone’s opinion, solid quantitative evidence shows that this is not
the case. According to a recent poll done by Yale and George Mason Universities
in May 2011, only 64% of Americans believe that climate change is occurring,
and only 47% believe that it is man-made (Lierowitz). When Anthony Leiserowitz
of Yale asked citizens how they thought scientists understood global warming,
he received the following response: "Only 13 percent of Americans got the
correct answer, which is that in fact about 97 percent of American scientists
say that climate change is happening, and about a third of Americans just
simply say they don't know” (Leiserowitz). In order effectively refute
the challenges put forth by climate change skeptics to the environmental
movement, it is necessary to closely analyze their motivations.
The skeptics’ allegations of environmental alarmism arise
from a general mistrust of science and challenge the credibility of the
environmental movement.
In
their book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade
to Deny Global Warming, Hoggan and Littlemore argue that the scientific
process is highly misunderstood by the general public and is leveraged by
skeptics to create uncertainty (Hoggan and Littlemore). The scientific process
is never one hundred percent accurate or certain, and, in addition, scientific
statements that have been sufficiently proven are called theories, despite the
fact that the everyday implication of this word is a ‘guess’ (Hoggan and
Littlemore). As Bill McKibben states in his article, “Climate of Denial”,
political and industrial leaders use the uncertainty of science to their
advantage,
“Cloud the issue
as much as possible so that voters, already none too eager to embrace higher
gas prices, would have no real reason to move climate change to the top of
their agendas. I mean, if the scientists aren't absolutely certain, well, why
not just wait until they get it sorted out?”
Some believe that although humans are
changing the planet, environmentalists are over exaggerating reports or
data. Published in 1990, Dead Heat gives an early look at the
destruction that is to come. The second chapter, “The End,” eerily predicts a
major heat wave for 2006, a prediction that became reality for France at that
exact time. Although the authors concede that the scenario is only one of many
that could play out, it is haunting to see how much of the information was
known over twenty years ago, and how little we have done about it. Allegations
of inaccurate evidence harm the environmental movement by creating mistrust and
skepticism of the movement’s validity.
Another significant threat to the sustainability movement
is psychology, namely a tendency to believe what we already believe and a
resistance to change. Psychology plays a large role in the way
that people think about climate change, their decision-making process, and
habits. In his book Why Aren’t We Saving
the Planet?: A Psychologist’s Perspective, Geoffrey Beattie explores
the motivations behind the belief that climate change is not man-made and
people’s everyday attitudes and decisions related to global warming. He
presents his experiments on the carbon labeling system that has become more
popular in Europe and concludes that, while the labels have significant
potential, producers need to carefully consider the format and overall
appearance. He also studied reactions to Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, and found that people “felt more motivated to do something about
climate change, more able to do
something and less likely to think
that they had no control over the
climate change process…” (Beattie 241). All of these statements are related
to people’s emotions, and therefore can be studied with psychology. As Chris
Mooney states in his article “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science,”
psychology plays a large role in reasoning:
Reasoning is
actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call ‘affect’). Not
only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about
people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts,
in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long
before we're aware of it…We push threatening information away; we pull friendly
information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but
to data itself (Mooney).
This leads to a heated debate against
environmentalists, who are urgent in their tone. Their passion riles up those
of the opposing side, resulting in the overall passion that we see today. As
Mark Catoe states in his answer to the Quora question on the passion of the
climate change skeptic movement, people are convinced by “motivated reasoning…a
brain reflex that inclines us to believe what we already believe – in spite of
new information that comes our way” (Catoe, Quora) Since acceptance of climate
change is something that conditionally effects one’s entire lifestyle, people
have great subconscious incentive to continue with what they already believe.
Psychology plays a large role in people’s opinions of the environmental
movement and directly motivates them to continue with previous notions of
skepticism. Motivated reasoning limits people from opening up to pitfalls in
their argument and keeps them closed to new developments. Overall, it can
hinder people from forming logical and rational opinions, and this poses a
threat to the environmental movement.
The unique
American culture of freedom of choice makes the population resistant to
behavior change recommendations, threatening the environmental movement. The
authors of Dead Heat describe our
history with pollution and the evolution of our materialistic economy,
recounting the cultural foundations of industries. For example,
“…coal burning
took hold in England in the 1600s after the widespread clearing of forests…In
America, however, abundant forests provided both pioneer and city dweller with
all the wood they needed for decades after others had turned to coal…This sort
of excessive energy use still prevails in America today” (Oppenheimer and
Boyle).
As McKibben states, “We had the
single hardest habit to break, which was thinking of energy as something cheap”
(McKibben). In addition to our freedom of choice ideology, the United States is
also deeply driven by consumerism. Americans simply do not like being
told what to do, especially when it comes to their consumerism.
It is also
important to address the economic motivation, which, according to a recent poll taken
on LinkedIn, is the biggest motivation behind the skeptic movement (Allan,
LinkedIn). Big businesses, with invested interest in unsustainable
operations, invest money in convincing the public not to move away from
over-consumerist culture. McKibben
proposes that the Kyoto Protocol was not taken seriously by the United States,
because big business and lobbyists got in the way of any real potential the
U.S. had to act. This is countered by the positive changes the Kyoto Protocol
set into motion in Europe. McKibben looks critically at motivations behind
industry that keep the U.S. so far behind Europe on climate change issues,
looking at motivations behind industry. “But in any given year the payoff for shifting
away from fossil fuel is incremental and essentially invisible. The costs,
however, are concentrated: If you own a coal mine, an oil well, or an assembly
line churning out gas-guzzlers, you have a very strong incentive for making
sure no one starts charging you for emitting carbon” (McKibben). Many
companies fail to look at bigger picture costs such as health effects and
irreparable degradation of the environment and instead only focus on profits
for the current quarter. As
Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney once said, “We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make
history. We have no obligation to make a statement. We are here to make money.”
Businesses reap monetary benefits from denying climate change and convincing
their customers to do the same.
In recent years,
the progress of the environmental movement has been greatly hindered by
skeptics. Only some of these
skeptics are motivated by selfish reasons, primarily those with economic
incentive. Others are motivated by innocent trains of thought. It is often
difficult to reason with them because their beliefs are extremely strong but
are rooted in psychological and social patterns that are more covert. “In other words,
when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an
analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers” (Haidt). It is
important to analyze the roots of their motivations in order to be able to
better reason with them. It is this population that can potentially be
convinced and mobilized to help environmentalists save the planet.
Sources Cited
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