Denial of the implications of climate change has its charms, most especially perhaps for those who are most knowledgeable about the science.
To understand why, consider the experience of Robert Sabbag, a writer who survived an air crash and was interviewed yesterday on radio about his book Down About Midnight. The crash occurred thirty years ago in dense fog.
Sabbag: At about 2 1/2 miles short of the runway at about 140 mi. an hour we hit the woods. We took out a hundred yards of trees.
Q: This is a crash that came without warning?
Sabbag: Without any warning whatsoever, thankfully. I have to say that I can't imagine what it might have been like had we known we were going to crash. I hear stories about people who have survived these kinds of disasters, and they talk about the minutes leading up to it. We had the luxury of being taken absolutely by surprise.
[emphasis added.]
Very few people would not be terrified if they were on a plane they new was going to crash. I have to believe that to the great majority of scientists and growing numbers of laypeople who have studied it, climate change is seeming more and morelike an impending plane crash, although not an imminent one.
To the best understanding of most climate scientists, the readily observable changes in weather patterns and the environment are part of a man-made process that seems destined to make the climate a living hell within the lifetimes of children born today and possibly within their parents’ lifetimes. It seems possible that this process, if it is not somehow reversed, could lead to the extinction of humanity.
It is difficult to imagine returning to sleep peacefully after waking in the small hours of the morning with thoughts like this. It would be a luxury not to know.
This terror of knowledge has turned climate change from a scientific controversy, now over, into a crisis of the human spirit. In the U.S., the political balance struck in the Waxman Markey energy bill passed by the House and the categorical opposition of Sen. James Inhofe and other deniers are symptoms of this crisis. But they are only symptoms of a deep psychological and emotional crisis that every informed citizen of the world has probably experienced at least momentarily.
The crisis is not the process of climate change, which is simply an unfolding fact. The crisis is in our reactions, in our heads, in our hearts and our spirit.
In his lecture on An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore speaks of his concern that his listeners will veer from denial into despair. But this is too simple and pretty a picture. There is an emotional phase, perhaps only momentary, between denial and despair, and it is filled with terror.
If there is a path to successful climate action at any level, we must confront this crisis of knowledge and the human spirit. The great majority of people deny not because they lack information but because they do not want to be terrified. If we continue to deny this natural, human reaction, if we sweep it under the rug, we will smother the change in human consciousness that is needed to turn the tide of climate change.
In future diaries I plan to discuss the consequences of the psychological and emotional crisis for public policy and outline a more hopeful path.