just.

There’s a neat video on YouTube that explains a Harvard psychology professor’s theories on this exact question in relation to global warming (which I’ll now refer to as “climate change” :).

Daniel Gilbert theorises that the reason we aren’t doing much about climate change is due to 4 key characteristics:

1. Face - climate change doesn’t have a face. Osama bin Laden does, Saddam Hussein does, but not climate change. “…we see faces in the clouds, but not clouds in faces.”

2. No moral confrontation - we can deal with moral conflicts over food & sex, but atmospheric chemistry isn’t on the moral radar. We can get worked up over who slept with who, but climate change doesn’t create any moral distress. “If climate change was caused by gay sex, or the practise of eating puppies, millions of Americans would be massing in the street insisting that the Administration do something about it.”

3. Future threat - our brain can deal with the immediate, the present, but we have limited cognitive processing of the future.

4. Slow rate of change - “you can see a candle being lit in a dark room, but you can’t see 3 candles being lit in a bright room”. Our brains are sensitive to relative changes, not absolute changes. “Day by day we have transformed our world into an ecological nightmare [...] but for most of us it is simply business as usual.”

The theories are heavily based on evolutionary theory, in particular I would like to see #3 fleshed out in an non-evolutionary way.

You can use this framework to fill in a substitute threat, instead of climate change. Mr. Gilbert uses terrorism as an example of a threat, opposite to climate change, that pushes all 4 buttons above - hence the strong, immediate and definite action triggered by it in people subject to the threat.

I agree entirely with what you say above. Consumerism, unbalanced life, & selfishness are like the frog and the pot of boiling water. Put the frog into boiling water and it’ll jump straight out, but put the frog into cold water then let the water come to the boil and the frog will stay in the pot until cooked alive. We are the same when it comes to so many things in life.

So, what’s the solution? Are we to all have “life mentors” that can keep a check on us every fortnight and therefore see the changes that we would miss? Or, should these issues be marketed better - have a face and a catchy jingle, have stunning graphs showing things are changing quickly, that the problems are here and now - to trigger us into action?

I also wonder if our negative framing of the problem contributes to our slow action? It is always in terms of things we should stop doing to prevent bad thing happening. There is very little that presents a clear, compelling picture of the personal benefit of lifestyle change.
Some of that may be because although in some areas downgrading is compelling there is always a fear that we will get left behind and be generously allowed to stave to death in a town park when we get old. Even calling a step down in our busyness and consumption downgrading or stepping back reveals the depths to which we are soaked in a particular more equals forward way of thinking.
Also, lets be honest. Stuff is fun and convenience is… convenient.

That video you mentioned is really interesting.

On a side note coming from your comment on people getting more upset about sex than climate change, I find it pretty interesting how certain groups of Christians like to jump up and down about sexual morality issues. I wonder if maybe puritanical Christians like to talk about sex (like most people, frankly), but that talking about sex in general isn’t “acceptable”, so they choose to get outraged about “sexual immorality” just to give them a chance to talk about sex??

Like Leviticus 10 says (NIV) “But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales—whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water—you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat and you must detest their carcasses. Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you.”

But you don’t hear people getting outraged about shrimp consumption. Yet Bible literalists love to jump up and down about Leviticus 18.22 22 ” ‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” (Everyone should watch the documentary about homosexuality and the Bible “For the Bible Tells me So”, by the way).