Climate Change, Ping-Pong, Morality And More (Part 1)
An average reader's experiences when it comes to information about our planet's reality
A friend and I were having an unusually impassioned discussion. It was a special one too - where two people, seemingly in a feverish debate, are unwittingly endorsing each other’s views. The topic at hand: how focused information on climate change is out of reach for an average reader.
We eventually came to our senses, mildly embarrassed, and emptily looked at each other as we processed the futility of the last few minutes.
Brain fades not withstanding, please read below about why I think an average reader finds it difficult to understand this wicked problem because of, well, it’s wickedness. (No conspiracy here)
This is the first part of a two-part series where I write about climate change and information dissonance.
The complexity of climate change means different people – authors, scientists, researchers, journalists, governments etc., – look at it through lenses that are trained to be discretionary. These aren’t contrarian views from opposite camps. These are people on the same side talking about the negative effects of human inaction in tackling climate change.
Unfortunately, this difference in frames results in disparate perspectives for an average reader.
Governments and Metaphorical Ping-pong
Government narrative has a familiar trope - fossil fuels are affordable, abundant, and are already implemented at-scale. What they are essentially saying is that the transition to a low-carbon future is expensive. This is a justifiable position when large portions of a nation’s population do not have access to food, clean drinking water, and quality education to name a few. This is the situation in most countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. When there is only a finite amount of money to be spent, it is natural that you prioritise.
Who is to say what those are? There are some with a few ideas.
The calls to wean away from fossil fuels are led by the industrialised nations in Europe and North America – whose industries used the same fossil fuels to increase national income for a good part of the last two centuries.
No value judgement here. These are the facts.
The industrialised nations are leading a coordinated global response to tackle climate change, although questions loom over adequacy of domestic climate action and tangible international support.
The politics of climate change makes this the most consequential game of metaphorical ping-pong the world has seen.
When lay people like you and I, purveyors of vast amounts of information, read about this doomsday MMORPG except with real-world consequences, we shrug and say, ‘This looks like a long one’.
It is human nature to wait for something definitive to happen before we break our inertia – much like how we wait for the clock to turn to a round hour before we start a task. Ah, that familiar feeling!
Climate Scientists live in the grey
It is a thankless job to be a climate scientist. They spend years studying changes in our natural ecosystems, weather patterns, and occurrence of extreme climate events, before attributing temperature rises largely to emissions from human activities.
*Pause* when yours truly wrote the previous line, I paid extra attention to what I was implying. My work here is laughably low stakes compared to climate scientists who understand the responsibility their words carry and tend to be careful with it *Unpause*
Naturally, scientists speak about their findings in probabilities.
Probabilities are a step away from the world of black and white, the different shades of grey. Humans do not like grey. Grey is complicated. Grey is unfamiliar. Grey means we must invest effort to understand. Grey means that we take a position, when the rest of the world huddles together in cold comfort.
Before we talk about what grey is, let us talk about what is undisputed.
Greenhouse gases warm the earth’s atmosphere, and this is an important reason why life exists on our planet
Earth’s temperature has increased and decreased over thousands of years and has been naturally occurring due to a variety of factors
Over the last 200 years, the earth is warming at higher-than-normal levels, and every passing decade since the 1980s has been the hottest decade in recorded history
Sea levels are rising at an average rate of 0.12 to 0.14 inches since 1993, significantly higher than the 0.06 inches rise observed between 1880 and 2013.
The amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is the highest in 800,000 years at 412 parts per million, and rising
Some of this excess CO2 is absorbed by oceans, resulting in ocean acidification
I could go on, but you get the general picture.
Now for the grey –
It is highly likely that this 200-year period of increased average temperatures is a consequence of human intervention and the increase in greenhouse emissions from industrialisation
It is also likely that the increase in sea levels will significantly alter coastal landscapes across the world and the livelihoods of its residents
Marine ecosystems are significantly affected by ocean acidification, and this will have secondary effects on the food we consume and the livelihoods of people dependent on fishing
I could go on, but you get the general picture (x2).
Climate Reality and the Human Brain
Human brains have evolved to condense vast amounts of information into digestible versions. Everything that we see around us, in our homes, offices, the beach (I miss the beach), or somewhere on the streets, is a world filled with things that are very different from its fundamental composition.
We see wooden furniture, and not cellulose. We see glass, and not Silica. We see colours, and not a stream of colourless photons.
The world we see is the brain telling us a story, from the electrical pulses that are relayed through our senses. This story is what we understand as reality.
I am sure you have had a version of the following example happen to you at some point in your life. You are walking down the road and you catch a glimpse of a strange figure out of the corner of your eye. You are startled and you look again. This time, you realise that it is merely a rock (or some other common object). Why do you think that happened?
The story your brain told you when you first looked was that there was a strange figure. That doesn’t match the version of reality you are used to or would like. You looked again to be sure about it because a strange figure isn’t supposed to be there. You used your visual sense to fact-check the information and the brain revised its assessment. All is well in your reality.
Now imagine a scenario where you notice changes in our environment and instead of using your visual sense, you must use common sense and reasoning to fact check. A rock is objectively a rock. How you interpret environmental changes near and far away from you is subjective.
It gets tricky, doesn’t it?
I am not suggesting that climate scientists speak the absolute truth. I am recommending that we invest time and effort to fact check and find the best representation of our planet’s reality. We must find the grey.
Only one problem. There is no instant gratification at the end of the climate-change-rabbit-hole for an average reader.
This is still at the level of acknowledging the issue. We know with a great degree of certainty that this level of planetary heating will have significant effects on our ability to continue to lead lives like we are used to. Not well into the future, but now and in the next decade.
That is the truth. We need to accept that. Whether you are a climate denier, a sceptic, an alarmist – the fact that our current ways are unsustainable for our planet does not change. That’s the first battle to be won.
Objectively difficult, but relatively easy compared to what comes next.
I assure you that I did not decide to end my first part on this note. It was purely a retrospective decision, but what a great place to leave it at, right?
Part 2 will cover why our heads start to hurt when we hear about ways to tackle climate change, irresponsibility of the famed fourth estate, and why morality might be our way out of this.
Thank you for reading!