Canadians reluctant to accept the necessity of climate-friendly behaviour may say something like:
Canada might rank high in per capita emissions, but the total greenhouse gases released by this country are modest compared to large industrial nations. So let others act before us and let them lead the way. Meanwhile, we should take advantage and maximize our output.
Reluctance to accept the reality of climate change is understandable. It is a human response. We’re programmed to avoid threats, whether they be from humans, animals or the natural world. University of Texas psychology professor Art Markman explained Why People Aren’t Motivated to Address Climate Change:
- acting on climate change represents a trade-off between short-term and long-term benefits, which is the hardest trade-off for people to make. Decades of work on temporal discounting point out that we overvalue benefits in the short term relative to benefits in the long term.
- Ignoring climate change in the short term has benefits both to individuals and to organizations. A few cigarettes are probably not deadly. Instead, it is the accumulated damage from years of smoking that leads to significant health problems.
- climate change is a nonlinear problem. Likewise, it took a long time before there were any signs of climate change that were obvious to people. People are much better with obvious threats like that nasty dog at the door than they are with threats that escalate quickly and nonlinearly.
- many effects of climate change are distant from most people. Research on construal level theory argues that people conceptualize things that are psychologically distant from them (in time, space, or social distance) more abstractly than things that are psychologically close. . . .most people are not forced to grapple with the specifics of climate change, but rather can treat it as an abstract concept. And abstract concepts simply don’t motivate people to act as forcefully as specific ones do.
- the future is always more uncertain than the present. That is one reason people value the present so much more strongly.
In his Harvard Business Review article, Dr. Markman suggests ways of talking with climate change skeptics and offers this final advice:
We have to be willing to look in the mirror and say that we are willing to live our lives selfishly, without regard to the lives of our children and grandchildren. And if we are not willing to own that selfish value, then we have to make a change in our behavior today.
Why do some people’s brains age like fine wine, while others age like… guacamole? Returning champion Art Markman is here to give us the latest word on how to keep all your marbles. Plus, it’s the much-anticipated return of Life Hacks with Captain Crinkle!
Paula Poundstone podcast (Dr. Monkman starts around 37 minute mark)
Categories: Climate Change
in-sights.ca 
The question should be changed to “Why government is not motivated to address climate change?”
All government sees with climate change is to add another tax, the Carbon Tax, onto the public. In Canada, especially BC, the Carbon Tax has nothing to do with climate change and Global Warming, it is all about filling the treasury coffers.
What is needed is not done.
If one wants to reduce carbon emissions, one has to offer alternatives to polluting vehicles and industry.
What should be done is establish a regional rail network for freight and passengers; we should reopen and upgrade abandoned rail routes as an alternative to take cars and trucks off the road,
A good example of this locally is, instead of spending $11 billion to extend metro Vancouver’s dated light-metro system 21.7 km, rebuild the E&N railway on the island (estimated cost ($3 billion); reinstate a Vancouver to Chilliwack passenger service (estimated cost $1.5 billion); and rebuild and upgrade the Salmon Arm to Kelowna rail line (estimated cost $2 billion) and provide a modern regional passenger rail service for the province estimated cost $3+ billion).
That is an example of government taking Global warming seriously, not taxing the poor.
Instead, government lavishes money on the voter rich lower mainland and the rest of the province can go to hell!
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When trying to better understand the devious fossil fuel industry’s disinformation and deflection tactics, I often turn to my personal copy of Michael E. Mann’s book “The New Climate War” from 2021. For more details on this exceptional reference book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Climate_War
Along with everything else in Mann’s book, chapter 4 entitled “It’s YOUR Fault” is certainly relevant to the slippery subject of the “personal carbon footprint.” He goes on to show how fossil fuel interests are applying the particularly devious strategy of DEFLECTION to direct attention away from the need for collective action — including pricing or regulating carbon, removing fossil fuel subsidies, or providing incentives for clean energy alternatives.
Deflection aims to divide the community of climate action supporters by stirring up conflict and promoting finger-pointing, behaviour-shaming, virtue-signaling, purity tests, and more (cf. Mann’s Ch. 4).
Time and again, Mann stresses the trap of deflection which places the emphasis on the behaviour of individuals, deflecting attention away from the need for systemic change and policy action. He ends the chapter as follows:
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