STEPHEN JACKSON - Catastrophism is as much an obstacle to addressing climate change as denial
For a long while
people have used the phrase ‘climate denier’ or ‘denialism’ as pejorative
labels to admonish those who reject the reality of climate change. Whether it’s
industry-funded disinformation spin doctors or members of the public who
are perceived as dupes for believing that climate change is just a hoax, anyone
who rejects the assertion that human-produced CO₂ emissions are dangerously altering the Earth’s climate system is
frequently labeled in this way.
But a curious thing
has happened over the past few years: the use of ‘denial’ has expanded to
include people who do accept established scientific evidence
about climate change, but who nonetheless devote little personal time and
energy to engage with the issue through activism or changes in their daily
habits and routines. This growing concern with ‘our’ denial as
opposed to ‘theirs’ has spawned a fair number of books and academic studies
that seek to explain why people’s concern about climate change so often fails
to translate into action. Kari Marie Norgaard’s Living
in Denial is a good example.
In this context, the
meaning of denial typically suggests that a number of ingrained psychological coping
mechanisms are preventing people from taking action even though they
understand the consequences. The imminent danger of climate change is, it
seems, so unsettling that many of us unconsciously push reality to the backs of
our minds so that we can get on with our daily lives and pretend that
everything is fine. Simply put, we find ways to avoid feeling the fear that
would otherwise compel us to act.
In the introduction to
her book This
Changes Everything, Naomi Klein follows this line of reasoning
when recounting her personal experiences with the politics of climate change:
“I denied climate change longer than I cared to admit,” she writes “A great
many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split
second and then we look away. Or we look but then we turn it into a joke (‘more
signs of the Apocalypse!’). Which is another way of looking away…We deny
because we fear that letting in the full reality of the crisis will change
everything. And we are right.”
Were we to accept this
reality, Klein
suggests elsewhere, we would recognise that “climate change supercharges
the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books,
binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.”
These assumptions
about what science and fear can achieve politically are widespread
in the climate movement. Whether denial is applied to ‘us’ or ‘them’, the
underlying belief is that a better grasp of scientific facts and a sufficient
level of dread—if spread widely enough—will cause people to agree on some
course of action. If only conservatives would stop denying the science, and if
we could all muster the courage to face the terrifying calamity that lurks on
the horizon, then finally we could come together through a
mutual sense of self-preservation. This is the power that catastrophism
exerts over public and political thinking.
Given this belief, it's
no surprise that prior to the publication of the International Panel on Climate
Change’s Fifth Assessment
Report, a former United Nations executive secretary optimistically
remarked that it was “going to scare the wits out of everyone,” and
“create new political momentum.” The same hopes for political unity—informed
by science and animated by fear—are echoed in the political advocacy
group Climate Reality's call
to action, which dreamily concludes, “When the world speaks with one voice,
our leaders have to listen.”
However, even a
cursory review of the positions advanced by the different groups who are
sounding the alarm reveals that, although anxiety about climate change can
certainly generate political responses, it does so in remarkably different ways…
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