Climate change? Well, we'll be dead by then

    • The Guardian,
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So as we career towards a mediocre outcome in Copenhagen, why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the overwhelming majority of scientists do?

Firstly we have the psychological issues. We're predisposed to undervalue adverse outcomes which are a long way off, especially if we might be old or dead soon. We're inherently predisposed to find cracks in evidence that suggests we should do something we don't want to do, hence the enduring appeal of stories about alcohol being good for you.

Suggesting that personal behaviour change will have a big role to play, when we know that telling people to do the right thing is a weak way to change behaviour, is an incomplete story: you need policy changes to make better behaviour easier, and we all understand that fresh fruit on sale at schools is more effective than telling children not to eat sweets.

This is exacerbated because climate science is difficult. We could discuss everything you needed to know about MMR and autism in an hour. Climate change will take two days of your life, for a relatively superficial understanding: if you're interested, I'd recommend the IPCC website.

On top of that, we don't trust governments on science, because we know they distort it. We see that a minister will sack Professor David Nutt, if the evidence on the relative harms of drugs is not to the government's taste. We see the government brandish laughable reports to justify DNA retention by the police with flawed figures, suspicious missing data, and bogus arguments.

We know that evidence-based policy is window dressing, so now, when they want us to believe them on climate science, we doubt.

Then, of course, the media privilege foolish contrarian views because they have novelty value, and also because "established" views get confused with "establishment" views, and anyone who comes along to have a pop at those gets David v Goliath swagger.

But the key to all of this is the recurring mischief of criticisms mounted against climate change. I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there's not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I'd welcome examples).






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