And if so, what does that even mean?
It's not even the biggest news in the world according to the biggest news in the world. Shit, climate change is getting less attention than the Jenner family and the iWatch and not only that, it is generally left to simmer and steep rather than boil over in the collective mind's eye. It all just seems TOO much to think about.
The question I would like to ask is:
What is the role of our brains in all of this? How are our minds trained to avoid the issues that require quick and adaptive decision-making skills?
In an age where it is both socially and politically acceptable that powerful dimwits head continued attacks on the scientific community, we have become most comfortable surrounded by irrationality. Dismissing data and overwhelming evidence of human-caused global temperature rise hints that perhaps the general public is collectively re-training itself to mistrust empirical logic. This is a compelling and concerning feature of a hyperconnected era in global development. Are we cognitively betting on the failure of the Enlightenment?
I
In 1958, German economist and sociologist Max Weber attributed the security of a state and the legitimacy of its governing bodies to a collective acceptance of three different types of authority. Our minds are trained in remarkable ways to deal with legal-rational, traditional and charismatic power held by organisational and individual leadership. According to Weber, this eventually shapes our systems of rule, our bureaucracies and individual access to information. The degree to which we trust governing authorities is also the degree to which we participate in new forms of democracy. So, it is no wonder that more distrust in government leads to less participation in it.
Today, we see a shift in all forms of government, as political structures are increasingly embedded in global economic processes, and vice versa. Since the meeting of commercial and financially enterprising delegates at Bretton Woods in 1944, The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund continue to define how to deal with the foreign procedures of fixed exchange rates and reserve currencies. Reconstructing cities and their infrastructures after the second world war spearheaded the development Project that paved the way for the modern market economy we know today. Theoretically, development and free markets would rectify imbalances in trade, and the world would become a more peaceful, unified place as trading partners were established. Keep in mind, disregarding environmental activism has a long history, and during times of organisational overhaul was seen as inconvenient finger wagging, standing in the way of deliciously unfettered growth (Civicus, 2006).
By looking at the role of financial institutions and lobbying organisations in modern democracies, it is obvious that legitimate power has become corroded. Those involved in policy decisions do not have the authority that is required to exercise force and control access to information, and this has created a modern society that is vulnerable and malleable. When systems of administrative and judicial rules are disintegrated, it makes it even more difficult to define urgently needed new organisational parameters around scientific data.
II
Over the course of the last century, we have not only altered our trading abilities and our governing structures, but we have altered the beautiful ecological diversity of our planet to a literal point of no return. Expansionism has theoretically improved our quality of life and centralised power in a good way, but by putting such confidence in institutions we have decreased our ability to think critically on livelihoods and then follow up with direct action. Ideological considerations aside, humanity continues to internalise the established forces of modernity as fragmented, but also somehow irrevocable.
I'm unsure, but I see a small beacon of hope that we can improve our adaptive capacity to climate changes, and this hope exists in new literature on neuroplasticity and grassroots social change. Neuroplasticity recognises that the brain is a dynamic organ, able to change its neural pathways as a result of changes in behaviour and environments. Dr. Norman Doidge points out in The Brain That Changes Itself (2007) that acknowledging the brains ability to change may be fundamental in achieving social change necessary today. The unsound belief that a modern market economy is the only acceptable governance structure (and justification for everything following in its wake as necessary sacrifices for continued economic growth) is a fallacy. The neurological and reflexive process of questioning hegemonic power can be paralleled to rejecting biological determinism, because it is now well understood that society re-shapes itself according to its social and physical environments. Our mantra of a post-WWII political economy that yields unlimited growth forever is dysfunctional and highly irrational, even in the mind of a child during his or her 3rd grade math class. If we want the peace of mind that comes from knowing our civilisation isn't headed for the hyperbolic cliffs of humanity, we may need change equivalent to a geo-political lobotomy.
III
To avoid anxiety we allow ourselves to skim over a complex myriad of problems included under the umbrella issue of global warming. Get a drink. Don't bring it up. Buy a snack and a pair of shoes and sohelpmegod don't bring up politics, social justice or the environment at the dinner table. In addition to this paralysis, it's not helping our self defined case as "most innovative species of all time" that we are stalling more than ever as calls to arms by scientists and human rights activists increase exponentially.
Re-framing discourse around environmental change as a social justice issue is crucial leading up to the UN Climate COP in Paris this fall. New discourse must focus on communities who are not buffered by wealth, meaning most of the people on the entire planet, and who are already feeling the effects of climate change. Holding the innovative spirit of capitalism as central to climate talks is to abandon the reality that poor lives matter. This dismissive and criminal attitude has become the hallmark privilege of living as a rich person in a developed country.
Adjusting our attitudes and strengthening new ways of thinking would be part of what it takes to create a more concerted effort to globally alleviate devastating conditions that people live under. The sanctity of neoliberal individualism is at risk if adaptive defences were built for people living far away, people that we may never meet. As we see the number of refugees explode in an unprecedented global migrant crisis our minds are triggered to acknowledge how terrible our empathic adaptive capacity is. Looking to the future, when hundreds of millions of people are on the move from places made unliveable due to resource depletion and ecological collapse, what ideological walls will we build then?
The environment and livelihoods will only be taken more seriously than the wealth of nations if we collectively refuse to accept business-as-usual economic and non-ecologically centred policies. As we see it now, leaving it all up to our "elected" officials is terribly ineffective. The need to assemble organisations comprised of reasonable and accountable climate change referees is crucial in the reflexive process of social change. Take the drought in California this summer as an example of this. Water shortage this extreme is not a cyclical rendition of seasonal drought as much as it is foreshadowing for how slow we are in our understanding of the processes that directly affect us.
"How much more California will warm depends on how high global emissions of greenhouse gases are allowed to go, but scientists say efforts to control the problem have been so ineffective that they cannot rule out another five or six degrees of warming over the state in this century. That much warming would probably turn even modest rainfall deficits into record-shattering droughts."
-NYTIMES, AUG 20 2015
Robert Keegan (1994) explains that the challenges we face when sorting through the data of climate change are essentially cognitive challenges. From a psychological perspective, Keegan looks at human and childhood development, and “In Over Our Heads” explains that modernity, and processes of globalization contain too many variables for us cognitively understand and process. It is also argued that we are in a transitional stage as individuals where established organizations and technology cannot keep up with new data, so we're getting more and more screwed. The process of going from the socialized mind, to the self-authoring mind means going from being told what to do to deciding how to deal with unexpected outcomes as individuals. As we deal with these complex post-modern problems, a transformative mind is required to question our own assumptions and become more reflexive in our approaches to globally intersecting issues, especially in regards to climate change.
There is a heavy amount of literature emerging on neuro-plasticity and this can be related back to the literature on learning-in-action as described by Donald Schon in the 80's. The move away from technical rationality towards more reflexive decision making may provide part of the solution to some of the conflicts of interest mentioned above. When individuals and and practitioners are able to store skills and competencies based on experiential knowledge instead of running on a slippery treadmill of avoidance, is the only chance we have at confronting climate change, and more generally, issues of development, poverty and social change.
Or maybe it's all just a fringe environmentalist hoax, and there's no need to worry after all.