Almost all of what we hear in the news today, in relation to the environment, tends to be on the topic of the anthropogenic degradation of our natural systems and a grim-looking future for us, as humans, the animals, and plant species altogether. We have tendencies as humans that are seemingly natural; yet, at the end of the day, we would all potentially like to think that we are a rational species who look out for one another, and the well being of the life-support systems that helped us build the foundation of society in which we now live in (Some may call it the Anthropocene[i]). From fossil fuel driven agriculture, to humans driving large greenhouse-gas emitting SUVs, we enjoy our given lifestyles, as well as our qualities of life, which influences the defensive psyche within ourselves because no one wants to acknowledge the fact that they attributed, even if it’s a minuscule amount, to the disruption of the climate (or the death of a polar bear). Nevertheless, the picture we have painted for our societies is one of a depressing future and thus, it doesn’t help the resolution if the news we are constantly hearing bashes the actions of humankind. However after reading Per Epsen Stoknes’s book What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, my own outlook has changed drastically-from pessimistic to more of a “grounded hope,” as Stoknes calls it.

As T.S. Eliot once explained, “Humankind cannot bear too much reality” – be it a wide variety of natural disasters: drought, wildfires, more numerous and hazardous hurricanes, or even intense flooding from copious amounts of precipitation (Tropical Storm Irene here in Vermont). Here, I look at why such events, in their current framings, provided via news (e.g. Newspapers, or documentaries) don’t help the majority of the world’s human population adjust their lifestyles or psyche to reverse this global disconnect. As it turns out, a majority of people across all countries (54%) are concerned about climate change, and to ground the same statistic in the U.S.: more than 50% think that global warming is a major threat. So then, why do we decide to throw climate change on the back burner? As it turns out, many psychologists whom have integrated their academies with that of environmental activism have answered this question.

As author Daniel Quinn would put it in the framework of his book Ishmael, “Mother Culture teaches the human species that the ways we live is the only human way to live, and thinking about other ways is an utter waste of time,” which serves as a good analogy to the messages of climate communication that are constantly singing in our ears. These messages tell us that we can’t win because it’s us, versus the globe, which encompasses all the species of flora and fauna, to the deep depths of the oceans, but also expands itself to include the air humans breathe, the soil we indirectly derive energy from, and the great peaks of mountain tops where clouds linger- intangibly shielding us from the sun’s rays, whose absence would also be the beginning of human genocide by the natural systems that embody all of us, no matter who we are or where we live. Seemingly, we need to utilize more proactive framings of climate messages that interact on the level of solutions, rather than level of sacrifice, doom, or uncertainty.

Many of our modern day politics influence our identity and what we choose to believe in, or whom we choose to receive our information from, which is also determined by our ethical and social mindsets. No two individuals are exactly the same; however, if our views align well enough then we are more likely to socially imitate and interact with each other. Some of the framings we read today induce fear, or a sense of guilt, which can appear as such: “Earth’s average temperature has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past century, and many scientists believe greenhouse gases and carbon-dioxide emissions from human activities are to blame.” (Than, 1) In this message most, if not all of the components of poor climate disruption messages, from the perspective of progress, are present, which include a sense of withdrawal from the issue, since it is de-localized, and presented to us in the form of longer-term implications (or solutions) of this global giant. Moreover, there is also a sense of being dissociated from the issue (impersonal attachments to the implications, or ramifications). Lastly, there is a lack of the tangible results presented from our slowly forming global cultural movement around climate change action. By Than saying, “Earth’s average temperature has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past century,” we immediately feel distant from the issue, as well as if its implications (and solutions, in many other climate disruption messages) are long-term and are meaningless in the present, to us, as rational human beings. Sensing an accusatory tone, some readers will naturally think of the “many scientists who believe greenhouse gases and carbon-dioxide emissions from human activities are to blame” as being driven by their actions, their lifestyles, their SUVs, their LARGE consumption of meat – their ways of life, as they perceive it in that moment, and that they are guilty as charged.

In another article, Vermont climate change activist Bill McKibben, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, paints a blistering picture of a climate message: “some hard numbers about climate change [might help], he explains. “June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United Sates. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere.” This sort of writing isn’t exactly the most inspiring ‘call to arms’ (1). These kinds of messages create cognitive dissonance[ii], and feelings of guilt or even remorse within our kin, which can attribute to a feeling of eco-anxiety. “And maybe worse than the [feelings of guilt or remorse that translate into sadness], we feel dejected and doubtful of our ability to change anything,” which are probable side affects of eco-anxiety (Stoknes 174). This impairs our ability to take in the numbers, and instead, leaves us feeling, stagnant, in our own bubble of environmental degradation; with little freedom to discover the bars of our own cage, we turn back to Mother Culture, and the song-in our heads, preaching about our state of hopelessness.

Do we simply not hear and listen to the words we read on paper or screen? No, of course we do. However, before such words are translated into a meaningful message, the language filter through our biases, ideologies, and world views, which accounts for much of the denial behavior among many (Clayton 641). This inevitably, and perhaps subconsciously, influences our desire to seek information that aligns with the same biases, ideologies and worldviews that we filter most, if not all, of our information through.

The concept of confirmation bias explains our humanistic tendencies to want to verify what we already know. Humans tend to search for information that aligns well with our given schema(s): how we think, what we want, or how we feel – and then trash any information that could threaten those alliances. Stoknes relates this to climate disruption in a well-put paragraph:

The problem is that this [(confirmation bias and their respective implications)] sometimes leads us to avoid, shrug off, or forget vital information that would require us to change our own bellies and behavior. In terms of climate, the bias works both ways: Those who already are concerned about global warming will read more news that confirms it, and those who believe it is bogus will prefer news sources that question the science. The bias is reinforced when the beliefs are connected to deeper values and identity. People then exhibit a strong selection preference for information on climate change that already matches and reinforces their cultural identity and worldview. Once it gets going either way, the confirmation bias makes it self-reinforcing” (73).

This strong psychological loop that our brains can subconsciously get us involved in can partially explain why modern climate change messages don’t work toward solutions, but further our displacement into the depths of a dark abyss of misguided information on what is sometimes referred to as a natural systems disruption issue (NSDI).

To understand the disconnect between the numbers and messages behind NSDI and why we seem to sometimes ignore this, we need a fundamental understanding of what drives our attitudes. Dartmouth College psychologist and researcher Dr. Albert Ellis created the original ABC model in psychology, which aims to encapsulate three main parts of attitude that relate to a learned tendency in our minds to perceive people, behaviors, beliefs, or other things in certain ways. The ABC model consists of:

A-an affective, or emotional component of the issue, behavior, person, belief, or thing;

B-a behavioral factor, which consists of the result of the affect (A); and

C-a cognitive element that has to do with schema of the issue, behavior etc.

These attitudes are strengthened in our mind when all three flavors of the recipe add up; otherwise, we could end up with scenarios such as climate disruption where “[for] three in every four people, feelings, knowledge, and behavior about climate change don’t really match up” (Stoknes 59). This disparity is, in part, a result of climate communications that aren’t founded on fundamentally sound psychological principles-mainly in the sub-disciplines of: evolutionary, cognitive, and social psyche.

Many of the messages that reach us on the topic of climate disruption have to do with the cognitive component of the ABC model. However, that doesn’t address the other two aspects of behavior and emotion. These can increase the dissonance within ourselves, as we have conflicting components (ABC) within our attitudes, which can also play into pessimistic views of existing solutions. Furthermore, too much pessimism or optimism can also hinder our progress in combating climate change, with the caveat that there are many solutions already being implemented, alongside the vast array of resolutions that are there for the taking, and all we have to do is reach out to grasp them, for they are that close to us – everyday and everywhere (Stoknes 218).

This dissonance begins to set in, via the framework of the global warming issue, when any number of components end in contradicting values or attitudes. For example, if solving climate change requires me to reduce my carbon footprint because I have a large one, and I also know that greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming, then two factors of behavior (e.g. I drive my SUV and eat a lot of meat) accompanied by contradicting information (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, that come from my lifestyle and actions, contribute to climate change) don’t go well together. As humans, we utilize four main strategies to cope with dissonance: (1) modify the perception, (2) weaken the importance, (3) add extra cognitions, (4) add false correlations, and causations in your head to further dismiss the concern (Stoknes 63-4). Stoknes says, “The conclusion from the social psychology perspective, is: more often than not, it is actually behavior that determines attitudes, not the other way around. If our lifestyles are far from climate-friendly, then our attitudes tend to follow” (67).

Denial is often a state of conscious or unconscious refuting of potential threats to protect our egos, livelihoods, social groups, or qualities of life, and thus, avoid possible feelings of angst, fear, or hostility; however, this can play out very differently in many people – driving them to be more unresponsive, or deny – where people tend to be more proactive in their disclaimers (Stoknes 16). Active denial consists of knowing some facts about an issue, but denying and reframing (using the four strategies above) because it is seen, subconsciously, as a threat to our values that are personally, politically, or otherwise affiliated with our lifestyles and worldview. Passive denial involves indifference – we are disconnected from the issue.

To expand this analysis, in the framework of climate disruption, an active denier might say something like: “Climate change? What about it? We would have already dealt with it, if we could do anything about it, which means it’s probably not real. We should put it on the back burners of our cauldron that holds all the issues of our lives, environment, globe etc.”. In contrast, the active denier might employ more hostile forms of reframing such as: “Climate change isn’t real, as we would’ve seen the effects, and affects by now, here. So it is safe to say that it is probably a political-affiliated, and fabricated issue that holds no true merit, nor cumbersome implications.”

Moreover, these states of denial and confirmation biases that we have been looking at, under the umbrella of cognitive and social psychology can be further examined, in the light of why people employ these behaviors in the first place. In this area of academia, evolutionary psychology helps us understand the inner human-animal, as well as the drivers of our primitive instincts. These understandings give us a window to probe into people’s behaviors and mindsets that can reinforce the strength of our closed-minded attitudes, or behaviors associated with climate disruption.

Five factors are influencing our inner animal psyche, which aren’t negative, or counterproductive, but rather serve as an evolutionary framework for survival and also enable us to interpret “why it is difficult for humans to respond to climate change; second to find practical, cultural solutions that shape and go with the flow of our evolutionary tendencies [as our] problem is not biological, but cultural in character”; thus, “[it] may be smarter to understand more of the relevant pschyo-biological processes before attempting to modify human action” (Stoknes 29). These five components are: (1) me and my self-interest, (2) the so-called “flock status”; (3) mimic, bio-mimicry, animal-mimicry and then mimic, again. Social-imitation, in humans, is considered to be the mirroring of other equivalent social behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, or worldviews of other humans, animals, and plants then, (4) our short-termism, and lastly (5) our perception of risk (Stoknes 28).

Take each in turn. If the climate issue doesn’t sound like it will affect you, your family, your friends, or your kin then you won’t be motivated to do or act on it all that much. Likewise, the flock status involves our attraction to show off our wealth or power, in many cases, this comes out as possessing “cars and boats and large houses and countless other things to display how big our own playground is.” (Stoknes 30) With social imitation, however, we choose to mimic what we think the “majority” is doing. This enables some of us to think that we shouldn’t recycle, or recycle as much, for if we notice that others in our neighborhood aren’t doing it then we are also less likely to participate in the transformative cultural movement. In the window of greener energy, the argument goes: “we shouldn’t switch over to solar panels, as no one else in our neighborhood, and none of our social groups have made the switch (or maybe only one person has, which could potentially result in that person enduring much ridicule and criticism from their opposing kin. Our short versus long-term thinking makes us subject to irrational personal interests that could-potentially-be related to our first component of me, myself, and my short-term interests (which also includes the fourth factor of short-termism), as oppose to the long-term collective interests e.g. “…farmers who discuss climate change and agricultural innovations with their peers are more likely to innovate in their own cultivation practices. As many recourses are managed collectively, and are therefore subject to conflicts over short-term individual interests” (Clayton 643). Lastly, our perceptions of risk lie within our logic. We, rational human beings, aren’t likely to perceive getting mauled by a snow bear as high on our risk scales, if we live in Dallas, Texas. This lack of locality and frequency of the relevant event(s) make it a low risk in our minds. Likewise, if all the news we hear about global warming takes place halfway across the world, or on top of our globe, in distant places that most people only interact with it on the level of a screen, in front of us then we can begin to see where climate disruption falls on our risk scale-most likely very low.

At this point, we have visited social, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology – and now we need to reframe climate messages to break down the five barriers that Stoknes refers to as “the five D’s”: (1) Distance, (2) Doom, (3) Dissonance, (4) Denial, (5) and iDentity (82). We’ve explored these already. The climate messages aren’t localized (Distance), instead, they have been threating and doom-inducing to our memory (Doom), such as to leave us in a state of hopelessness. The dissonance was explained as a result of the ABC model and its conflicting components of emotion, behavior, and a cognitive aspect of past experiences with the issue, which leaves us feeling desperate. However, this future doesn’t have to be that of a brown, desolate world, instead it very well can be one of green growth – with much diversity in all our systems and of all its respective inhabitants. Nevertheless, it will take proactive activism from all walks of life, for “breaking cultural denial involves moving from information to knowledge and then from knowledge to acknowledgement” (Stoknes 79). This transition from information to knowledge can be thought of as humans employing their intellectual tillers (a swerve from thinking to behaving), then from knowledge to acknowledgement can be seen as moving from both “thinking” and “doing “to “being.”

The many faces of solutions to climate disruption are endless and vast as the open galaxy. Nonetheless, the idealized solutions don’t come from just thinking in certain, more sustainable ways or even doing and living in more distinct, and eco-green styles, but actually have to engulf us to the extent that they truly become us. This can come more organically if we move towards “new ways of envisioning climate change [that] can bring the message all the way to our own doorstep, feet, and lungs. We can start to discard the framings that maintain current barriers [the five D’s] and embrace the new ones that support solutions (Stoknes, 53). These kinds of techniques, accompanied by others, can create effective and affective changes within us- then eventually within our own cultures as large-scale interacting entities. As it were, the psyche can be seen as consisting of “three fundamental activities: theoria (thinking), praxis (doing), and poieis (being). Poiesis means “knowing by creating,” which originated with Aristotle (Stoknes, 204). The problem with listening and learning to the mainstream global warming messages is that they mainly target the cognitive and behavioral aspects of our life, but not Aristotle’s third activity of the psyche: being.

The vast consumers’ pallet of framings to choose from is very colorful – from insurance to opportunity frames, there is also a boatload of health and preparedness frames that can all compliment each other. Many of these can be thought of and implemented in organized and thoughtful ways via think tanks. Many are already being implemented, as it is estimated that “one to two million organizations [are] working for the benefit of the disadvantaged and the more-than-human world,” which is a staggering number (Stoknes, 106). If that many organizations have already been started up and are all attempting to improve some quality of being, then we can start to see the reality, and other side of the spectrum of these climate disruption communications. These solutions go side by side with another phenomena known as nudging, which involves changing the default options that consumers can have when thinking about our own homesteads, in the perspective of their respective energy consumptions, wastes, and much more.

Framings utilize the ambiguous nature of language and its influences on our own psyche or world views. Climate scientists who argue that numbers and science is what we need more of to convince people that climate change is of an upmost importance is a counterintuitive method of communicating climate disruption messages. For example, the ever-ingrained number of 350 ppm of CO2 in the air, which is the “safe” and accepted amount of carbon dioxide that our atmosphere can take before becoming dangerous for human life – now at 400 ppm of CO2. This message reinforces the five D’s spoken of earlier. Stoknes put the same message into a more tangible, and conducive manner for creating awareness and change:

Let’s imagine that CO2 is a brown haze heavier than air. All CO2 thus falls down to earth and creates a blanket layer, a pool around us that we are “swimming” in. How high would this layer be if spread out evenly all around the world? It used to be around fifteen feet before the industrial revolution. But humans have now added around seven extra feet so we’re today immersed in a dense twenty-two-feet-high fog all over the world.” (42).

This sounds more tangible, and close to us than the distant and abstract parts per million (ppm) measurement. That type of communication is what will be vital in changing the human psyche encompassing climate disruption because figures, such as ppm only create more “disempowerment and disillusionment, since no person, group, or nation is able to influence them. To see measurements of what we as citizens can influence is very motivational. It brings the issue intro our sphere of influence” (Stonkes, 162). We need better climate messages intermingled with other effective, and affective means of climate messages, and practices that integrate a holistic perspective on the human psyche targeting all three factors of: emotion, behavior, and being, within our inner mindsets, as well as worldviews.

Another useful framing technique targets our perceptions of risk. The preparedness frame has to do with bringing the implications of climate disruption to our own homes, lives, and social groups. If we take the all the natural disasters: wild fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis etc. and examine how much more frequent and severe they have been in recent years then we can begin to reframe the climate messages surrounding those catastrophes. Instead of doom, and distance, alongside dissonance, or denial-inducing frames, we can speak of the measures we should all take to be resistant and resilient to these godly forces of nature. As it turns out, many ecosystem services already provide natural barriers or buffers from the forces of the natural world, which have been know to desolate and force vast migrations of people away from their own homes. The coral reefs help provide buffer from wind and water disasters-then our forests also provide a natural filtration system for much trash, or pollutants, which should be reluctant news to our ears, as nature tends to be very resilient (teebweb.org).

Furthermore, nudging can be a very powerful tool to create change at the level of individuals that can work from the bottom-up to the societal level if enough people are involved to help break down social barriers. The idea that we can make a “bundle pack” (e.g. a “two for one” type of deal) or provide more options for consumers that ought to be altered to incorporate a triple bottom line is a proactive mechanism. As we saw earlier, people are drawn to their self-interest, but also take into account what friends and family, or even people around them are doing. So if the default option for our houses, in X, Y, and Z neighborhoods, are to provide electricity to your home via the grid, which involves natural gas, wood, or coal burning, then you are likely to buy into that option. However, this makes the change to alternative green energies very hard for us social creatures. But what if we made the default options for various consumer purchased services and goods such as a homes electricity supply to be coming from solar panels, or wind energy, as opposed to fossil fuel driven energy? Then we would see a gradual rise in persons involved with greener energies, or ways of living.

The same can be applied to a cafeteria in any school, or institution, as it correlates with food waste. If the entity provides large trays for students to utilize then they are more likely to bring more food back to their table and thus-throw away more “waste,” too. As brought up in Stoknes’s book, my own Champlain College and other universities have already implemented this kind of nudging, which led to the following results: “[The]…cafeteria now saves fifty pounds of [food] at each meal and three thousand gallons of water each day” (Stoknes, 127). These results are powerful, and truly are representative of the influence nudging can have on us.

These actions interwoven with newly amended frames to align better with our inner animal and psyche, is pivotal to create transformational change. Despite the long and rough road ahead for our human species as we grapple with climate change, we need to keep our spirits high, as much is already being done to mitigate these planetary shifts. Moreover, even though we may not see the fruits of our labor today or tomorrow, we need to be resilient in the long run. This is often difficult for humans; hence, the need for a large-scale global cultural movement focused on climate change that starts right here – in our own Vermont backyard.

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[i] An epoch of a human driven earth, which encompasses all the alterations we have made to the natural systems of our planet (anthropocene.info).

[ii] Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable inner tensions within us that can, for example, create a sense of denial within people on an issue, such as climate change (Stoknes, 61).

Khalil Mirza is a student studying environmental policy at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.