Who Cares About the Climate Anyway

Following conversations with several friends recently, who are generally good people, but refuse to limit their excess use of carbon, usually with the excuse that they don't really care, I decided to have a deeper think about why they were adopting this classic form of psychological denial.
Normally its used as a means to deny its their problem simply by saying they don't care. That way they have put themselves in a position that means this existential threat no longer hurts them or makes them feel directly uncomfortable and they can continue doing those things that are the root cause of the emotion in the first place. I suspect they are risking that some magic is going to resolve any problems between now and when any climate fallout affects them directly. Its a good bet I guess.

So I needed to discover why this was and if there was any reasonable rationale for the behaviour. It came to me the other day after reading a report called the "State of the Future in The Guardian about how organised crime is by far the biggest threat to our future alongside climate change and access to decent water

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2167270,00.html

But the trigger in the report was not the leader. It went on to say that there are now 27 million people held in slavery, more than during the slave trade and the majority Asian women. So I thought why are we not doing anything about this. And to my point, why do we still not care about slaves given the dramatic scale of the problem and the shameful history still bearing down on those of us still reaping the fruits of that vile trade. Well I don't have the answer about our selfishness here. But it does tell me that its not the only thing we don't care about.

Its an obtuse thing to deny the logic behind climate science's claim to anthropogenic climate change these days. Its clear to me that any remaining denial is purely political, emotional and influenced largely by prejudice. Logic and science do not come into it. For me this is almost certain behaviour

So people only care about things that are immediate and close to us, things that will affect our livelihood or safety directly. Remote dangers and injustices, no matter how big, that fall outside our immediate sphere of comfort are clearly not that important to us. We really don't actually care about them or the outcomes of future generations. I suspect this is ultimately because we do not need to care about the social well being of others any more. We are all wealthy enough not to have to rely on the help of others.

Its still difficult to explain this complex argument to my friends without hurting their feelings though. One statement always does get them thinking though:

Our fun loving lifestyle of travel, homes and leisure means that the climate issue will be resolved by Darwin