Why Have We Failed to Engage the Public about Climate Change?
By Peter Montague (pm8525@gmail.com)
Why have we, so far, failed to sway the public sufficiently to overcome the power of Big Oil and reduce annual fossil fuel emissions. Here’s an explanation:
In 2021, the New York Times ran an interview with the Israeli historian, Yuval Harari (author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind [2014] and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow [2016]). Here is how Harari explained our failure to sway the public sufficiently:
Harari: “[M]y most central idea is simple. It’s the primacy of fictions, that to understand the world you need to take stories seriously. The story in which you believe shapes the society that you create.”
Interviewer: One area where the scientific community has communicated clearly is the scale of the climate crisis, and the story that they and so many other people are telling about it is incredibly urgent. Why then do you think we’re still lacking in the global political will to address the problem in a way that’s equal to the coming catastrophes?
Harari: It’s important to have human enemies in order to have a catchy story. With climate change, you don’t. Our minds didn’t evolve for this kind of story. When we evolved as hunter-gatherers, it was never the case that we could somehow change the climate in ways which were bad for us, so it’s not the kind of story that we were interested in. We were interested in the story that some people in the tribe are conspiring to kill me. So, we have a narrative problem with climate change. But the good news is that it’s not too late or too difficult to overcome. According to the best reports I’ve read, if we now start investing 2 percent of global annual G.D.P. [global GDP was 87.4 trillion in 2020. — PM] in developing eco-friendly technologies and eco-friendly infrastructure, that should be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. The beautiful thing about 2 percent is that even though it’s a lot of money, it’s completely feasible. [Two percent of $87.4 trillion = $1.7 trillion. — PM]
Harari: And there are other stories: If you look at movements like Greta Thunberg’s and the whole youth movement, what the young people are telling the world is that you are sacrificing us on the altar of your greed and irresponsibility. It’s no longer something hazy like CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a human drama of the old sacrificing the young. That’s powerful.
So, Harari’s message is: we need a compelling story about elders sacrificing youth and/or about someone in our tribe trying to kill us. On both counts, Big Oil — with ExxonMobil as ringleader — definitely fits the bill.
