Teaching Climate Change at the Community College
Climate change and the brain
Anyone who engages with the issue of climate change, in or out of the classroom, will encounter those who would prefer to ignore the topic entirely. Paul Hoggett writes in the preface to Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster :
Our collective equanimity in the face of this unprecedented risk is perhaps the greatest mystery of our age.
The short answer to this mystery, according to psychologists, is that climate change is not the kind of threat that our brain evolved to recognize. Robert Gifford explains in “The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers That Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation”:
The human brain has not evolved much in thousands of years. At the time it reached its current physical development, before the development of agriculture, our ancestors were mainly concerned with their immediate band, immediate dangers, exploitable resources, and the present time…. None of these are naturally consistent with being concerned, in the 21st century, about global climate change, which is slow, usually distant, and unrelated to the present welfare of ourselves and our significant others. (p. 291)
The cognitive biases and defense mechanisms that create resistance to engaging with distressing topics like climate change have been well documented by psychologists and other social scientists. Read more about these important topics from the links below. See also the tab on Climate Grief.
Psychology of climate change
Don't Even Think about It : why our brains are wired to ignore climate change by Call Number: Southeast Main Collection 551.6 M37d 2014"Most of us recognize that climate change is real, and yet we do nothing to stop it. What is this psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? ... With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different and drive us apart, but rather in what we all share: how our human brains are wired--our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe."
- Psychology and Climate ChangeFour page article by Susan Clayton providing an excellent summary of the psychological research about how humans perceive and respond to the risk of climate change. Published in Current Biology, 2019.
- The Dragons of inaction: psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation.Academic article by Robert Gifford in the journal American Psychologist, 2011.
- How brain biases prevent climate actionBBC article, 2019
- The Psychology of Climate Change Communication"A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public" from the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University. 54 page pdf.
- Train Your Brain"We know what we need to do for the climate, so why don’t we just do it? A neurosurgeon explains." By Somini Sengupta in the New York Times, Nov. 2022
Climate psychology : on indifference to disaster by Call Number: Library ebookThis terrific anthology "examines the many different ways in which we both avoid and square up to this gathering disaster, and the many faces of alarm, outrage, denial and indifference this involves."
Minding the Climate: how neuroscience can help us solve our environmental crisis by Call Number: Southeast Library 612.8 D84m 2022
