Why Our Brains Tune Out Climate Change

In 2018, Climate Outreach, a leading climate-communications non-profit, released a handbook for scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on how to effectively communicate climate change to the public. The handbook suggests that good science alone is not enough to motivate people to take action against climate change, directly discouraging scientists from using “the big numbers of climate change” in climate conversations. Global temperature targets and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, however, are critical to moving climate policy forward. So, if good science is not enough, then what is?

To answer this question, we first must understand human evolution. George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach, describes in his 2014 book, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, why our evolutionary psychology makes us ill-equipped to respond to the challenges of climate change. Using the acronym PAIN to illustrate the four triggers in our psychology, he explains that as humans, we tend to focus on what’s Personal, Abrupt, Immoral, and happening Now. Marshall contends that climate change is unable to set off any one of these triggers since it can often feel like a distant and abstract concept to most. This is compounded by the fact that so many of climate change’s effects are incremental, such as weather conditions. These incremental changes can act as a “false friend” in that we believe something is safe just because it’s familiar despite it being a very real danger (Marshall, 2014).

Our psychological predisposition to take mental shortcuts like this makes us sensitive to short-term effects and consequently leads us to prioritize short-term costs over long-term gains. As many climate policies call for immediate investments into protecting what can seem to be a far-off future, it can be difficult to convince politicians and voters to keep these concerns on the agenda when issues like the economy feel far more important. Even within the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how government officials have responded to budget shortfalls by cutting back on environmental programs like what Governor Newsom has done in California.

Risk perception, however, is ultimately a socially formed reaction. This means if we can perceive climate change to be harmless, under different social conditions we can also work to perceive climate change as a very real threat. New studies over the past five years indicate that younger people have already become more aware of the dangers associated with climate change than previous generations. One study, published by Global Environmental Change earlier this year, looked at survey responses from four different generations of American residents from 2010 to 2019. They discovered that while anxieties about climate change generally increased for all the surveyed subjects, millennials and Gen Zers—those born after 1981 and 1997, respectively—reported the highest levels of concern over climate change, particularly in the categories of worry, guilt, and anger. The authors suggest that these intergenerational differences are in part due to the increased presence of “climate change events” in these people’s lives, such as Hurricane Katrina. For younger people, climate change is not an abstract concept—it has a face and its face is the devastation brought on by natural disasters. As the effects of climate change become more salient and difficult for lawmakers to ignore, the generations who have spent their lives impacted by climate change are becoming the voters most likely to engage in climate efforts.

While the study suggests young respondents should be more engaged with climate change action, the authors acknowledge that millennial and Gen Z respondents were also more likely to be burdened by climate anxiety. One study published by The Lancet reports that up to 56% of young people feel that humanity is doomed, a development often referred to as climate nihilism (Smith Galer, 2021). This response, many climate experts argue, while understandable, is similarly unproductive to climate denial in impeding and often overcasting progress that has been made in addressing climate change. In his 2021 book, The New Climate War, Dr. Michael E. Mann adds that overindulgence in “doomsday porn” can lead to burnout and a loss of agency, consequently discouraging potential climate activists from engaging in the movement. He also observes that many of the “doomsday” arguments circulated on social media platforms, such as “unstoppable tipping points” and “runaway greenhouse effects,” remain unsubstantiated and lack scientific evidence (Villarreal, 2020).

Such findings demonstrate the continued need to study psychology and the role it plays in influencing public opinion surrounding climate change. Confronting climate change will require more than just good science; it will also require creativity, ingenuity, and a willpower to combat climate change for the sake of all humanity. Studying the psychological impact of climate change will help world leaders and experts understand how to communicate its severity effectively—and how to balance the real risks of climate change with inspiration for change, even when the future can seem hopeless.