Climate Change And The Psychology Behind The World That Doesn’t Care Enough About It.

The response to climate change is always a mixed bag. We have people who are fervently supporting any initiatives to reduce pollution and support the environment… and on the other hand of the spectrum, we do have people who believe that climate change is a hoax.

(As a tongue-in-cheek joke, I always believed that winters in Illinois were a sign of “global cooling”, while summers in Illinois or Melbourne, Australia were part of “extreme global warming”.)

The problem is that we know our anthropogenic activities can be highly polluting, and that’s why some major cities around the world face massive issues with air quality and smog. It’s perfectly visible. Ironically, the COVID-19 lockdowns around the world actually cleared the air as anthropogenic activities were significantly halted.

However, we have to get back to the crux of the issue. Why are many people still not interested about environmental conservation, even with all the news articles about pollution and environmental changes at hand?

It depends on how climate change is being communicated, sad to say.

We do need to rely on the 3 Is for a proper presentation:

Inform — Providing the necessary factual details about certain topics.

Influence — Convincing an audience to follow the train of thought that Inform provides.

Inspire — Getting an audience to do something based on the train of thought that Influence has taken control over.

Much information is provided about how anthropogenic activites can cause that much environmental destruction.

However, when that information (and subsequent predictions) is continuously repeated in the mainstream media, people tend to get tired of it. They can develop doomsday fatigue.

And when one is tired of that narrative, will they be influenced or inspired to do something that is actually beneficial for the environment?

If they don’t… We would not be able to develop a collective sense of urgency in saving the environment.

Of course, we do see a bigger irony in the form of renowned climate scientists jetting about the world and giving presentations in swanky, air-conditioned convention centres, don’t we? Good information sessions… which are still lacking in the influencing and the inspiring sectors.

What really influences most people these days, though?

We can look to consumer psychology to understand how people are influenced into buying all the things that they don’t really need.

What products people buy and why they buy those things are heavily dependent on the emotions that they feel when they see a specific marketing advertisement.

The more impactful (or influencing) an advertisement has for a product, the more likely people are going to buy that product based on their emotional response rather than their actual needs, no?

Hence, we do see that there are people who end up buying things that they don’t need — which smacks of consumerism and is also heavily damaging to the environment. A product is only manufactured when there is a market for it. A basketball is spherical in shape, for instance. Nobody’s ever going to purchase a basketball that is shaped like a cube — there is absolutely zero demand for a cube-shaped basketball. But there is steady demand for spherical basketballs, hence there will be a market for that product.

Therefore, climate change ought to be communicated in such a way that tugs at the heartstrings of people — in a sense, we’d be looking at a marketing manipulation tactic right there. If we actually do want to inspire the world to do something about it, we’d have to be unethical in that sense.

Because if the prevailing narrative is a consumerist mindset, and current marketing advertisements are set up to extract maximum dollars from the prevailing consumerism in the market… any deluge of information about climate change with a dearth of influencing or inspiration would eventually be disregarded as “climate change fatigue”.

Right now, for instance, an iPhone would be priced at the range of approximately $1,000. Though that can be considered “expensive” to many people, most of us would still be able to shell out that $1,000 to get that iPhone.

But what if the iPhone were prohibitively priced at $100,000? How many of us would want to purchase that iPhone at that price?

Considering that the manufacturing of an iPhone X does result in 78 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, and it does take up quite a few rare minerals to manufacture that iPhone X…

We’d only stop purchasing the iPhones if the necessary minerals start to become scarcer and the prices start to rise, no? Nobody's gonna care about the 78 kg of carbon dioxide emissions per phone, even though 40 to 50 of them can produce enough carbon dioxide emissions to fill one entire Olympic swimming pool.

Unfortunately, hitting the wallets of people is a very effective strategy… But nobody in business really wants to do that, because they’d prefer the profits from a product that can be sold at reasonable prices, no?

Inspiring people requires a transcendence beyond informing and influencing.

How do cult followings arise?

Or even better, how do top earners in multi-level marketing schemes earn?

They earn their way to the top by being able to influence and inspire people to be like them, though others would call it emotional and/or psychological manipulation, pure and simple.

The reason why some people can become great multi-level marketers but most can’t — it depends on the ability of the person to influence and inspire. Perseverance and hard work are also key to succeed in a business like that, but the number 1 characteristic is still the ability of a person to influence and inspire — and that’s why most of these top earners can become motivational speakers in due time as well.

They’ve already worked their way through the influencing and inspiring journey so much that they can share these same techniques with others to broaden their audience and increase their reach.

That’s what a good writer ought to be doing, too. Influence and inspire.

Writing savants will mention that an article ought to inform and then provide a workable solution so that people will read the entire thing. Isn’t providing the solution a way of influencing and inspiring a reader to take action on a certain thing?

Information on its own falls flat. It works with educating people, and that’s what many people can do.

But influencing and inspiring? It’s not an easy thing to do.

Because, really, how do I inspire someone?

It’s easier for me to just provide a course and educate people to do things, isn’t it?

And that’s why most people will ultimately end up developing climate change fatigue. The important names in climate science don’t have the influential or inspirational clout just yet!

Meanwhile, we just don't have sufficient emotional investment in the environment to want to do anything yet.

Whatever material items we can get with our money are still more important for now.

This article was originally published in Medium.