Psychology of climate change denial

Climate change is often portrayed as occurring in the future, whether that be the near or distant future. Many estimations portray climate change effects as occurring by 2050 or 2100, which both seem much more distant in time than they really are, which can create a barrier to acceptance[2]. There is also a barrier created by the distance portrayed in climate change discussions.[2] Effects caused by climate change across the planet do not seem concrete to people living thousands of miles away, especially if they are not experiencing any effects.[2] Climate change is also a complex, abstract concept to many, which can create barriers to understanding.[2] Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, and it causes changes in overall average global temperatures, both of which are difficult, if not impossible, for one single person to discern.[2] Due to these distances in time, space, and influence, climate change becomes a far-away, abstract issue that does not demand immediate attention.[2]

In popular climate discourse framing, the three dominant framing ideas have been apocalypse, uncertainty and high costs/losses.[2] These framings create intense feelings of fear and doom and helplessness.[2] Framing climate change in these ways creates thoughts that nothing can be done to change the trajectory, that any solution will be too expensive and do too little, or that it is not worth trying to find a solution to something we are unsure is happening.[2] Climate change has been framed this way for years, and so these messages are instilled in peoples’ minds, elicited whenever the words “climate change” are brought up.[2]

Because there is little solid action that people can take on a daily basis to combat climate change, then some believe climate change must not be as pressing an issue as it is made out to be.[2] An example of this phenomenon is that most people know smoking cigarettes is not healthy, yet people continue to smoke cigarettes, and so an inner discomfort is elicited by the contradiction in ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’.[2] A similar cognitive dissonance is created when people know that things like driving, flying, and eating meat are causing climate change, but the infrastructure is not in place to change those behaviors effectively.[2]

In order to address this dissonance, climate change is rejected or downplayed.[2] This dissonance also fuels denial, wherein people cannot find a solution to an anxiety-inducing problem, and so the problem is denied outright.[2] Creating stories that climate change is actually caused by something out of humans’ control, such as sunspots or natural weather patterns, or suggesting that we must wait until we are certain of all of the facts about climate change before any action be taken, are manifestations of this fear and consequent denial of climate change.[2]

"It seems as if people stop paying attention to global climate change when they realize that there are no easy solutions for it. Many people instead judge as serious only those problems for which they think action can be found.”[2]

Individuals are alarmed about the dangerous potential futures resulting from a high-energy world in which climate change was occurring, but simultaneously create denial mechanisms to overcome the dissonance of knowing these futures, yet not wanting to change their convenient, comfortable lifestyles.[3] These denial mechanisms include things like overestimating the costs of changing their lifestyles, blaming others, including government, rather than their own inaction, and emphasizing the doubt that individual action could make a difference within a problem so large.[3]

Climate messages are filtered through cultural identity.[2] In the United States, climate change acceptance or denial is largely based on political affiliation.[4] This is partially caused by the idea that Democrats focus more on tighter government regulations and taxation, which are the basis for most environmental policy.[2] Political affiliation also affects how different people interpret the same facts.[2] The more highly educated an individual is, the more likely they are to rely on their own interpretation and political ideology rather than rely on scientists’ opinions.[2] Therefore, political worldviews override expert opinion on the interpretation of climate facts and evidence of anthropogenic climate change.[2] Another reason for the discrepancy in climate change denial between liberals and conservatives is the idea that “contemporary environmental discourse is based largely on moral concerns related to harm and care, which are more deeply held by liberals than by conservatives,” whereas if the discourse were framed using moral concerns related to purity that are more deeply held by conservatives, the discrepancy was resolved.[5]

Affiliation with a political group, especially in the United States, is a very important personal and social identity for many.[6] Because of this, it is likely that an individual will carry the popular values of their political affiliation, regardless of their personal belief on the matter, solely so they are not ostracized from the group and their identity.[6] A study of climate change denial indicators from public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010 shows that conservative white males in the United States are significantly more likely to deny climate change than other Americans.[7] Furthermore, conservative white males who reported understanding climate change very well were even more likely to deny climate change.[7] This is further proven through another study done in Australia, that showed that when participants had their political identity made salient, through definition and characteristics of supporters, were more likely to deny climate change and reject governmental climate change policies, especially when those participants were aligned with right-wing politics.[4]

One telltale worldview that leads to climate change denial is the belief in free enterprise capitalism.[8] The “freedom of the commons”, or the freedom to use natural resources as a public good as it is practiced in free enterprise capitalism destroys important ecosystems and their functions, and so having a stake in this worldview does not correlate with climate change mitigation behaviors.[8] Political worldview plays an important role in environmental policy and action (or inaction). Liberals tend to focus on environmental risks, while conservatives focus on the benefits that economic development brings.[9] Because of these differences in worldviews, with one political ideology focusing on risks while the other focuses on benefits, conflicting opinions on the acceptance or denial of climate change arise.[9]

Limited cognition of the human brain, caused by things like the fact that the human brain has not evolved much in thousands of years, and so has not transitioned to caring about the future rather than immediate danger, ignorance, the idea that environments are composed of more elements than humans can monitor, so we only attend to things causing immediate difficulty, which climate change does not seem to do, uncertainty, undervaluing of distant or future risk, optimism bias, and the belief that an individual can do nothing against climate change are all cognitive barriers to climate change acceptance.[8]

Ideologies, including suprahuman powers, technosalvation, and system justification, are all psychological barriers to climate change acceptance.[8] Suprahuman powers describes the belief that humans cannot or should not interfere because they believe a religious deity will not turn on them or will do what it wants to do regardless of their intervention.[8] Technosalvation is the ideology that technologies such as geoengineering will save us from climate change, and so mitigation behavior is not necessary.[8] Another ideological barrier is the ideology of system justification, or the defense and justification of the status quo, so as to not “rock the boat” on a comfortable lifestyle.[8]

Social comparisons between individuals build social norms.[8] These social norms then dictate how someone “should” behave in order to align with society’s ideas of “proper” behavior.[8] This barrier also includes perceived inequity, where an individual feels they should not or do not have to act a certain way because they believe no one else acts that way.[8]

Financial investment in fossil fuels and other climate change inducing industries is often a reason for denial of climate change.[8] If you accept that these things cause climate change, you would have to lose your investment, and so continued denial is more acceptable. People are also very invested in their behavior. Behavioral momentum, or daily habits, are one of the most important barriers to remove for climate change mitigation.[8] Lastly, conflicting values, goals, and aspirations can interfere with the acceptance of climate change mitigation.[8] Because many of the goals held by individuals directly conflict with climate change mitigation strategies, climate change gets pushed to the bottom of their list of values, so as to minimize the extent of its conflict.[8]

If someone is held in a negative light, it is not likely others will take guidance from them due to feelings of mistrust, inadequacy, denial of their beliefs, and reactance against statements they believe threaten their freedom.[8]

Several types of perceived risk can occur when an individual is considering changing their behavior to accept and mitigate climate change: functional risk, physical risk, financial risk, social risk, psychological risk, and temporal risk.[8] Due to the perception of all of these risks, the individual may just reject climate change altogether to avoid potential risks completely.[8]

One type of limited behavior is tokenism, where after completing one small task or engaging in one small behavior, the individual feels they have done their part to mitigate climate change, when in reality they could be doing much more.[8] Individuals could also experience the rebound effect, where one positive activity is diminished or erased by a subsequent activity (like walking to work all week because you are flying across the country every weekend).[8]

People with a tendency to think conspiratorially are more likely to deny the generally accepted notion that climate change is occurring and that humans are causing it.[10] If an individual is already motivated to reject the scientific consensus, they may create a story conspiracies among climate scientists in an attempt to back up their claim.[9] Those in support of free market economics are generally more likely to deny climate change, along with rejection of other mainstream science like the fact that HIV causes AIDS or that smoking causes lung cancer.[10] Endorsement of other popular conspiracy theories predicted the denial of climate change.[10]