book excerpt: how should we talk about climate change in the face of hot weather?
2024-09-18
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the hot summer is over, but this summer is undoubtedly unforgettable. according to the latest report released by the copernicus climate change service, the european union's climate monitoring agency, the global daily average temperature record has been broken many times this summer. the abnormally high temperature makes it possible for 2024 to replace 2023 and become the hottest year in the world on record. "the weather is getting hotter" and "there is another flood." as a small individual, how should we deal with the overwhelming news of climate change? matt wenning, who has the dual identities of a talk show host and a climate change scientist, combines light-hearted words with serious topics of climate change in his book "it's hot: what can we do about climate change?", so that we can fully realize that the climate crisis is closely related to our lives.
it's so hot: what can we do about climate change?
matt winning
translated by tang shuangjie
peking university press
by matt wenning
polar bear problem
climate change takes decades or even centuries. it's so slow that it's almost unnoticeable. as a danger, climate change is a far cry from everyday worry. you can't worry about how the climate is going to change 24/7 because we're not built for it and it's not a fundamental way of living. i mean, some people do care deeply about climate change (you know who they are) because that's just how they are. for others, it's just a passing thought and doesn't cause much alarm. humans are social animals, so we only care about those close to us, and we often mistakenly think that climate change only affects those far away, and that it's only about them and not us. for example, 59% of british people think that climate change will have a very serious impact on less developed countries, while only 26% think that climate change will have a serious impact on themselves and their families. the impacts in question are usually in faraway places, such as the arctic or the tropics, not in a waitrose supermarket in the city center.
worse still, when environmentalists try to call your attention to the problem, their default response is to show a photo of a starving polar bear standing on a sad little patch of ice. it’s the iconic image everyone associates with climate change. it was first published on the cover of time magazine in 2006 with the headline: “be worried. be very worried.” you say, “oh my god, this is terrible,” but you say, “who cares? i haven’t even been to the arctic, let alone know a single polar bear.”
“it’s a question that’s already lacking in real life, and it’s symbolized by an animal that has no relevance to real life,” george marshall wrote in his book, “don’t think about it: why our brains are hardwired to ignore climate change.” indeed, if your audience is hardcore environmentalists, then showing a photo of a hungry polar bear is normal, but it may not necessarily convey your message to the public.
a big part of this is that we've evolved to care about things that feel close to us, whether it's our loved ones or the dangers we face. the way people talk about climate change makes it sound far away. it's boring, academic, and something for scientists. it's also far away in terms of time. we care mostly about whether it's going to rain later today, but scientists are talking about what temperature the world will be in 2100.
it’s hard for us to imagine things we haven’t experienced, just like having a baby doesn’t feel real until it actually happens. as marshall brilliantly put it, “we hold it close enough to do something about it, but we also hold it far enough away that we don’t have to act immediately.” the problem is that we can’t wait until everyone is deeply hurt before we act.
this sense of distance is also reflected in their hiddenness. greenhouse gases are like the axe-masked man standing behind your bedroom curtains. if we could see these gases with our naked eyes, i think, maybe bright pink, it might make people feel more urgent and perhaps a little cute. well, what if they were gray? no, wait, that would look like a real "gray day."
i would say that we, homo sapiens, have a tradition of “out of sight, out of mind”. plastic waste is more visible to us, so it’s easier to remember in our daily lives. you see an empty coke bottle on the side of the road and think, “this is destroying the planet.” however, when you see a car, you’re less likely to think the same thing, you think, “this is a perfectly normal, everyday car.”
not completely discarding anything.
at some point, there is a real problem with the way scientists and the media communicate about climate change. news reports focus on presenting more and more "hard facts" to convince the public and governments to take action. if that doesn't work, then they double down on presenting even harder facts, as if people will eventually understand. they'll say things like, "sea levels are rising even faster than we predicted, by a full three millimeters last year." and the general public is like, "that's an ant, why should i care?"
but more information about how bad things could get is not necessarily the right thing to communicate. people don’t need to be fully savvy about the science to know it’s happening, to know they need to do something about it. as dr chris de meyer, a neurologist at king’s college london, puts it: “there are many situations in life where we don’t have perfect knowledge but can still cope perfectly… we don’t need to know every way a car can kill us to keep ourselves safe.” he adds: “the same is true for climate change. we don’t need to know every bad thing that could happen to us to know we have to do something about it.”
when facts conflict with the values we uphold or the lifestyle we are accustomed to enjoying, the loser is often the fact. this is not to say that we are complete villains who sincerely hope that animals will become extinct. we just like to have barbecue with friends.
this dissonance can lead us to react in a variety of ways, unwilling to accept the reality of the situation. in his book what we think about when we try not to think about global warming, norwegian psychologist professor per espen stocknes suggests: “perhaps we would be better off focusing less on climate change denial and more on fighting it.” we like to say things to make ourselves feel better and justify ourselves. for example, “i do other environmentally friendly things, like riding my bike to work once a week, so there’s nothing wrong with driving to the shops” or “science doesn’t mean it’s set in stone.”
at the global level, we must contend with the paradox that the planet is in danger, yet we seem to be doing little to address the problem. this fear can paralyze us, which in turn leads to more inaction. once that happens, all forms of climate denial have the soil and oxygen to take root.
how did this purely scientific question become endowed with social significance related to cultural identity? the answer lies in politics. addressing climate change requires considerable government intervention. the market itself cannot internalize the harm that climate change brings to society. therefore, we need to tax or regulate things that we intend to reduce, such as "carbon". from an economic perspective, this is simply correcting negative externalities - in simple terms, it is an act of harming others to benefit oneself.
the message of climate action is often quite negative. it requires you to give up the things you love, like eating rib-eye steaks and flying to ibiza, spain, to prevent the apocalypse. in extreme cases, it even involves humiliation. in a way, it sounds like religion: we must give up our present guilty pleasures now in the hope of achieving a better future in the distance. if we don't, then we'll end up in a situation that's even hotter than we thought.
if we take small climate actions, like reducing our meat consumption, it can sometimes make us more likely to take other environmental steps, but it can also make us more vulnerable to feeling like we’ve “done our bit.” i can relate to this and have had similar thoughts in the past. the perfect example was my last day at the edinburgh fringe festival in 2018. there were about 15 people waiting outside after my show, presumably to ask questions, chat or just say hello. so there i was, the last person at the last show on the last day. the patient young lady who had been waiting for about 15 minutes asked me, “if i do what you say—stop flying, drive less, go vegan—how many dogs can i have?”
we need to be proactive about climate change, not just about throwing things away. it should be about trying train travel and taking local holidays, trying exciting recipes and making a positive contribution. you don’t trade in your petrol car for a futuristic electric cybercar, like in the jetsons or some more modern sci-fi. we need to talk about the optimistic future we want. as others have said, the way martin luther king inspired people was by talking about dreams, not nightmares. we should create space for meaningful climate change action, which is essential to achieving the future we want.
(this article is excerpted from "it's so hot: what can we do about climate change?" the content has been deleted and the title is added by the editor)
