compensation for this risk? If you are like me, you would refuse to take part at all. The average of those who would accept payment was ten thousand dollars.
The experiment is frequently cited as evidence that people are more inclined to accept risk if it is an unavoidable part of their status quo. But, to my mind, it says something far more interesting about the role of informed choice and the underrated importance of anticipation. When you imagine being a volunteer, you can anticipate the horror of discovering that you have, quite needlessly, chosen a premature death.
This experiment contains important lessons for those building action against climate change. If climate change is regarded as an unavoidable condition, like a disease that we have already been exposed to, we will become resigned to it and, at most, might pay something to reduce our exposure to future impacts, just as we pay insurance on our homes.
If, however, climate change is regarded as an active and informed choice, it feels far more like being a volunteer in the medical research. Imagine, for example, that you are offered an immediate boost in your current standard of living if you agree to pass on an irreversible disruption of the world’s weather systems to your children (if you feel you can face it, look at the four-degree impacts at the end of this book to remind yourself of what is on offer). How much more income would you like to receive for that?
As soon as it is presented this way, all sorts of other considerations come into play—of anticipation, fear, responsibility, guilt, and shame. There is no option of being an innocent bystander to a crime that you have knowingly agreed to.
Climate change is never presented as a choice in this way. Most energy and fuel use is entirely automatic or woven into our daily lives. Government policy, in which decisions are more carefully constructed, deliberately removes or sidelines climate change in its choices. Even the people who deny climate change have never chosen short-term personal consumption over long-term collective climate disaster: They have chosen to believe that there is no problem.
There are, I believe, rich opportunities here for rethinking climate change in ways that might overcome the stultifying cognitive indifference to future loss: to talk less about the costs of avoiding climate change and more about the lousy deal we are getting in return for a marginally higher living standard. What is required is a moment of informed choice when people have to decide whether they want to accept this risk and, with it, the responsibility for being wrong.
Above all, as I will argue repeatedly in this book, people will willingly shoulder a burden—even one that requires short-term sacrifice against uncertain long-term threats—provided they share a common purpose and are rewarded with a greater sense of social belonging.
15
Certain About the Uncertainty
How We Use Uncertainty as a Justification for Inaction
Uncertainty is (I can say with some certainty) likely to be a major reason why people ignore climate change. In experiments, uncertainty about future outcomes is one of the key factors that lead people to act in their own short-term self-interest.
Policy makers and campaigners on all sides understand very well the importance of uncertainty in regard to action. This is why the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change expressly states, in its third principle, that a “lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures” to minimize the causes of climate change. And this is why President George W. Bush excused his inaction on the issue by saying that “no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and, therefore, what level must be avoided.”
The main source of public uncertainty, though, relates to the widespread perception that scientists are themselves divided on the
The experiment is frequently cited as evidence that people are more inclined to accept risk if it is an unavoidable part of their status quo. But, to my mind, it says something far more interesting about the role of informed choice and the underrated importance of anticipation. When you imagine being a volunteer, you can anticipate the horror of discovering that you have, quite needlessly, chosen a premature death.
This experiment contains important lessons for those building action against climate change. If climate change is regarded as an unavoidable condition, like a disease that we have already been exposed to, we will become resigned to it and, at most, might pay something to reduce our exposure to future impacts, just as we pay insurance on our homes.
If, however, climate change is regarded as an active and informed choice, it feels far more like being a volunteer in the medical research. Imagine, for example, that you are offered an immediate boost in your current standard of living if you agree to pass on an irreversible disruption of the world’s weather systems to your children (if you feel you can face it, look at the four-degree impacts at the end of this book to remind yourself of what is on offer). How much more income would you like to receive for that?
As soon as it is presented this way, all sorts of other considerations come into play—of anticipation, fear, responsibility, guilt, and shame. There is no option of being an innocent bystander to a crime that you have knowingly agreed to.
Climate change is never presented as a choice in this way. Most energy and fuel use is entirely automatic or woven into our daily lives. Government policy, in which decisions are more carefully constructed, deliberately removes or sidelines climate change in its choices. Even the people who deny climate change have never chosen short-term personal consumption over long-term collective climate disaster: They have chosen to believe that there is no problem.
There are, I believe, rich opportunities here for rethinking climate change in ways that might overcome the stultifying cognitive indifference to future loss: to talk less about the costs of avoiding climate change and more about the lousy deal we are getting in return for a marginally higher living standard. What is required is a moment of informed choice when people have to decide whether they want to accept this risk and, with it, the responsibility for being wrong.
Above all, as I will argue repeatedly in this book, people will willingly shoulder a burden—even one that requires short-term sacrifice against uncertain long-term threats—provided they share a common purpose and are rewarded with a greater sense of social belonging.
15
Certain About the Uncertainty
How We Use Uncertainty as a Justification for Inaction
Uncertainty is (I can say with some certainty) likely to be a major reason why people ignore climate change. In experiments, uncertainty about future outcomes is one of the key factors that lead people to act in their own short-term self-interest.
Policy makers and campaigners on all sides understand very well the importance of uncertainty in regard to action. This is why the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change expressly states, in its third principle, that a “lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures” to minimize the causes of climate change. And this is why President George W. Bush excused his inaction on the issue by saying that “no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and, therefore, what level must be avoided.”
The main source of public uncertainty, though, relates to the widespread perception that scientists are themselves divided on the
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