Chloe Walls

Theme II Paper

Climate change is the ongoing effects of human actions such as increased

greenhouse gas emissions, depleted energy sources, increased pollution, decreases in
freshwater availability, and much more. While there is still debate over whether or not
climate change would have happened without human actions, it is irrefutable that
human actions have accelerated these effects. Some of these impacts are seen as
irreversible, which poses the question “how much should people care about the
environmental crisis?” The obvious answer to this question would be “as much as they
want.” People cannot be forced to care about issues if they do not already.
Throughout discussion it has become clear that some people, at some points
even myself, feel as if they should not care about climate change at all. This may be
because they feel that they cannot do much about it or that it is not a large issue. For
me, climate change is obviously a large issue. However, it is hard to actively care about
it since I feel like my actions cannot significantly change the end result of the climate
crisis. I believe answering the question “how can we make people care more about
climate change” is more important than answering how much we should care. From my
experience, people must be convinced an issue is real and manageable before they feel
compelled to do anything to solve it.
The first way to achieve this goal is through education. Educating people on the
severity and causes of climate change can equip people with the knowledge to work
against it. Without proper knowledge of climate change, it can be hard to see the
connections between events. In Presky’s article “Why aren’t we more afraid of global
warming,” Presky highlights how “[that] month alone, almost 80 people have died in a
winter storm in Texas, a freak weather events scientists say is linked to heating in the
Arctic, as it pushes cold air from the north pole further south” (Presky, 3). If I knew
nothing about earth science or climate change, I would not believe events in the arctic
could affect places as far away as Texas! This can also be seen with melting polar ice
caps and equatorial flooding. Due to my education, I understand how flooding in warm
coastal regions can be caused by melting polar ice caps that raise the ocean levels. By
educating people on how the world is greatly interconnected, they may be better able to
understand how climate change contributions in one area can affect another.
Education on climate change has to be carefully approached and constructed.
People need to start learning about climate change at young ages and educational
media needs to be pushed for those who are out of school. Educational materials need
to be realistic, written by experts, and easy to understand. In Franzen’s article “What if
We Stopped Pretending,” he points out why we need to increase climate knowledge,
"halfway cutting our emissions would make the immediate effects of warming somewhat
less severe, and it would somewhat postpone the point of no return” (Franzen, 3).
Realistic goals regarding climate change acknowledge that current damage cannot be
reversed, but that we can still slow the impending devastation. This realization has
changed my outlook on the climate crisis. If the best we can do is postpone the
inevitable, then small individual actions may be worth it. I used to think my individual
reductions in water use or waste production would not be enough to make a difference.
I now see it as slowly chipping away at a much larger iceberg. Also, if enough people
start slowly chipping away we can eventually make larger dents.
This leads to another problem of why people do not care about the climate crisis.
For many, the problem seems too big and too far away to manage. The issue of climate
change is not easily seen or necessarily tangible. It can even be hard to see how
individual incidents like forest fires and floods can be connected to actions that impact
the climate on the other side of the world. Based on Rosemary Randall’s article “The Id
and the Eco,” when “dealing with climate change, we are in the terrain that
psychoanalysis calls resistance or defence - the ability to defend ourselves from too
much mental and emotional pain” (Randall, 2). Throughout the article Randall explains
that avoiding the topic of climate change often occurs in order to preserve our mental
health. When prompted to think about climate change, people often feel guilt, grief, or
internal conflict. Unlike other problems we face in day to day life, climate change does
not have a solution we can easily envision. To make people care more about the climate
crisis we have to work on reframing how we view it.
I believe this would be the most difficult step in changing the global actions to
postpone climate change and subsequent disasters. Many people are stuck in their
ways and unwilling to change their beliefs. Education may help to alleviate these
feelings of grief or guilt. An overall shift in viewing the climate change crisis as a
collective problem we have to slowly work away at may help people feel less internal
conflict that this is their fault or their responsibility. Another strategy could be by
rethinking traditions so that they do not contribute as much to climate change. For
example, focusing on spending time with family rather than gifts at Christmas could
make a positive impact on climate change. It could decrease waste from packaging,
decrease carbon emissions from transportation, and decrease any pollution caused by
manufacturing. We often see climate change as a multifaceted issue and feel that we
need to tackle each one individually, but sometimes changing one thing could lessen
the severity of several factors of the climate crisis.
Overall, a lot needs to change before we can start moving in the right direction.
However, I do believe that if many people start making small changes it can cause a
large difference in climate change on a global scale. It is all about how we view things
and changing that can help people care more.