Climate change and the human factor: Why does not everyone realize what is happening?

Abstract

The notion of standing on “solid ground” is most reassuring. However, it is a myth, because we now know that the surface of the earth is composed of tectonic plates that float and move. Similarly, the notion that our climate is stable and fixed is also a myth. We now know that we are living in a time of great flux, and as science tell us, we have a role its fate. Psychological defenses against the affects and anxieties associated with awareness of this progressive upheaval fuel the current sociopolitical debate about “climate change.” Maladaptive attitudes, rooted in ignorance, fear, superstition, and religion, will be looked at from a developmental perspective and applied to large‐group psychology. Just as young children are incapable of realizing that their violent actions could actually hurt their mothers, many adults refuse to believe that their actions could actually hurt “Mother Earth.” In addition, the possible role of transmitted ancestral memory of earlier global catastrophe is also taken into consideration. As such, it may be an unrecognized factor that may complicate large‐group responses to this most pressing problem.

Petro‐masculinity and climate change denial among white, politically conservative American males

“…Brenner (2019) applies Volkan's ideas to modern climate change denial, arguing that the intergenerational transmission of climate‐related traumas, dating back to the last Ice Age and passed on through written stories in religious texts (e.g., The Biblical account of the Great Flood that lead to Noah's Arc), has created a “residue of traumatic memory” (p. 142) that is quelled through denial and dissociative defenses. I have argued elsewhere (Nelson, 2019) that Volkan's ideas can be applied to those in the current American Right Wing—including those in the white working class—who voted for Donald Trump and continue to support his conservative policies.…”

“…I have argued elsewhere (Nelson, 2019) that Volkan's ideas can be applied to those in the current American Right Wing—including those in the white working class—who voted for Donald Trump and continue to support his conservative policies. In addition to being impacted by the “traumatic residue” that Brenner (2019) discusses, this large group has also experienced modern‐day, traumatic economic hardship that has resulted in many living in poverty (Case & Deaton, 2015; Case & Deaton, 2017) as well as perceived changes in racial status that have left its members feeling significant losses of socioeconomic power and associated threats to their large‐group identity (Cox et al, 2017; Mutz, 2018). Many of these people mourn a mythologized, idealized United States that included national exceptionalism, unfettered economic opportunity, and white racial supremacy (Nelson, 2019; Rudden & Brandt, 2018).…”

“…Many of those people who defensively deny or minimize climate change likely do so to maintain some form of existential equilibrium, to ward off terrifying dread and associated feelings of guilt (over their own petroleum usage or other similarly harmful climate‐related behaviors) or helplessness. These defensive psychological operations may be based in ignorance, fear, superstition, or religion and include a denial of one's own destructive capabilities (Brenner, 2019). They may be accomplished by altering one's mental representations of the impending catastrophe through “… investing suspicion and doubt, sequestering information, cultivating disavowal, by idealizing reality's self‐regulating powers, by entrusting a benign super‐human caretaker … or by any other means by which humans have always found our way to bear the unbearable” (Moss, 2019, p. 118).…”

“…Along related lines, religious appeals will be similarly unsuccessful, especially among Evangelicals who may doubt basic scientific principles including evolution, believe in the divine control of the climate (and minimize or deny human impact), and believe that environmental destruction will come as part of the “end times” (Zaleha & Szasz, 2015). As stated by Brenner (2019), for these people, “Ecological mindedness, like reducing one's carbon footprint or supporting the Paris Accords, would seem to be (sic) useless exercise of man's hubris in the face of God's will” (p. 140).…”

A day in the life of a psychiatrist in 2050: reflections on the inaugural Praxis trainees’ section editorial competition

“…Haridha Pandian, 1 Zahra Mohamedali, 1 George E. Chapman, 2,3 Patricia Vinchenzo, 4 Suhana Ahmed, 5 Zoé Mulliez, 6 Helen Bruce, 7 Wendy Burn, 6 Ania Korszun, 8 Derek K.…”