Wake up and Smell the Smoke!
What a turn-off: gloomy stats about mankind changing the weather, and destroying species 
and forests.
Environmentalists may get off on climate porn, but most people just turn away. “If it was really so bad, they’d do something,” says someone I know, without specifying who “they” are. The human tendency to convince yourself that everything is OK, because no one else is worried, is deeply ingrained.Psychologists studied this phenomenon after the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, a lady who was repeatedly attacked, outside her New York flat, by a stranger over the space of half an hour. Witness to that event were 38 people who stood at their windows but did not even dial for help. They just peered into the dark, listening to her screams, until she died.
Our tendency to shrug off responsibility seems to hold true even when we ourselves are in danger. Ninety per cent of the world population do not react to the danger of a disater even when the evidence of it become so thick that they could barely see the consequence of it. A small number only try to reported the “smoke” as an emergency. The inaction of other people can make us underestimate threats to our own safety, I am affraid.
In the past few weeks we have been told, by reputable sources, that the oceans are warming faster than anyone predicted. That species are becoming extinct a hundred times faster than fossils record. That fresh water supplies, critical to food production, are under strain. That we are approaching tipping points that may make climate change irreversible. This stuff makes me feel pretty desperate. I would think that other people would worry too. But then we go to work, and to friends’ houses, and no one mentions it. Nor do the politicians.
We are not claiming that there is a conspiracy of silence about environmental issues. On the contrary, some people argue there is too much noise. In most British offices, as the wisps come up the vent, the influence of the media probably means that there is more than one person looking concerned. But not a critical mass.
It is human nature to wait for someone else to go first. So despite the noise from green groups, we look for get-out clauses. We blame Brazil, India and China, or big corporations. People who write cheques to save cute monkeys from extinction also buy soap and margarine made from palm oil, whose production is devastating the tropical forests where the monkeys live. People who buy cloth shopping bags to reduce waste then fill them with water in plastic bottles that are shipped to China to be burnt. The part of our brain that is programmed to imitate dominates the part cued to self-preservation — especially when the threats are complex and long-term.
Given the importance that companies and governments apparently place on environmental issues, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to the psychological aspects.
Two years ago a small study for the Sustainable Development Commission found that UK households that generated their own energy, through solar power, wind turbines or air source heat pumps, became more likely to conserve energy. They would buy A-rated appliances and turn things off.
This didn’t just apply to rich eco-fanatics: it applied equally to social housing tenants. Irrespective of whether they had chosen it or not, the process of generating their own energy seems to have given many people an “emotional connection”, says the study. The visibility of the solar panels or wind turbines made them proud to be pioneers.
But the smoke is coming up through the vent. If enough people start talking about the smoke, perhaps others will start to see it too. And if enough people act, the rest may follow. For that, it seems, is human nature.