The phenomenon of cooperation has always been a problem for evolutionary theorists. At first glance, it would seem that "survival of the fittest" rules out any organism doing something nice for another one at a cost to itself. But this is clearly contradicted by the evidence: lots of cooperation occurs in nature; how then to explain it?
An early idea, floated by Darwin himself, was group selection: the notion that individuals in a community make sacrifices to increase the survival and reproductive success of the group as a whole. The trouble is, nobody could figure out how such a thing could initially arise, given the severe and unyielding logic of evolution, which seems to drive inexorably toward utter selfishness.
Evolutionary theory (which is surprisingly mathematical) has progressed a long way since Darwin, and while researchers are still arguing about the origin of cooperation, they now have some more nuanced ideas, which are explained by Harvard Professor Martin Nowak in the July Scientific American.
What does this all have to do with the climate emergency? Kindly flip the page...
I'll skip a lot of the interesting background Nowak provides, and cut to the key points.
We humans are the most social and most communicative of species. Uniquely, we have a rich language (which we love to use to gossip about each other), as well as the ability to store information in places besides our memories.
What this all leads to is a tremendous concern with our reputation: we want to be known as "good people" (even if we're actually not, which leads to much deception). People with a good reputation are more likely to be treated well by others (this even happens with some animals).
Studies confirm our desire to burnish our reputations: for example, people give more money to charity when they think they're being watched.
Now consider the Hummer driver. To anyone concerned about the effects of fossil fuel use on the climate, this person isn't helping his reputation by flaunting the excessive and gratuitous consumption of petroleum. On the contrary; he's liable to be looked down upon.
This raises a couple of key points:
1. The critical importance of education in addressing climate change. There's an analogy here with smoking: the greater the proportion of the population who became educated about smoking's ill effects, the more social pressure was exerted on smokers to quit or at least take their cigarettes outside. These days, being a smoker can cause a significant hit to one's reputation among many people. There's a critical need to educate the populace about climate change and greenhouse emissions, to create the same kind of social pressure.
2. The heavy burden of responsibility of the climate deniers. They are actively trying to subvert the development of cooperation to solve humanity's greatest challenge. Not what I would want written on my tombstone.
To reiterate: solving the climate crisis is going to require widespread education so that climate abusers and deniers will have to suffer a bad reputation.