Why climate change denial is a spectrum and what that means
By Abigail McHugh-Grifa – Abigail McHugh-Grifa, Ph.D. is executive director of Climate Solutions Accelerator. Contact her at [email protected].
Excerpt:
Lately, when someone asks how I’m doing, I’m honestly not sure how to respond. On one hand, I am clearly doing well: I’m healthy; I have friends and family members who love and support me; I have a stable job that I (mostly) enjoy, with relatively generous pay and benefits; and I have plenty of opportunities to engage in stimulating activities, interact with interesting people, and contribute meaningfully to my community. On the other hand, I am horrified by what is happening in the world around me, terrified for my children’s future, and exhausted by the relentless pace of modern life and the stress of trying to keep up with it all. Nevertheless, I usually say, “I’m fine,” because I don’t want to burden anyone with the weight of my concerns, and I’m reluctant to fully acknowledge those concerns for myself.
When I ask other people how they are doing, and they tell me they are fine, OK, or even good, I suspect they are engaged in a similar form of denial or avoidance.
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Unfortunately, ignoring or denying our problems won’t make them go away. Though pretending to be fine does have some real short-term benefits (e.g., allowing us to avoid awkward conversations), suppressing or dissociating from our feelings is a dangerous habit to get into, primarily because it undermines our ability to appropriately respond to the very real and serious threats we’re facing. Of course, one of those threats is climate change, which a small percentage of people deny exists, but I’ve come to believe that all of us are in denial about climate change to some extent, myself included.
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We all like to think of ourselves as “good people,” but that sparkly self-image quickly tarnishes once you accept that climate change is caused by human activity and Americans are disproportionately responsible for creating the mess we’re in.
As such, the comforts, pleasures, and excesses of “the American Dream” start to look more like a nightmare, once you acknowledge their consequences, but since that lifestyle is familiar to us, widely celebrated, and includes many perks, people are reluctant to even consider letting it go.
Climate change is connected to many other environmental and social problems, so unraveling those threads is not only confusing and overwhelming, but it’s also likely to rub up against personal beliefs and values that are uncomfortable to question. In order to avoid that discomfort, people may choose to focus their attention elsewhere.
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I no longer think of climate deniers as a small group of people who claim that climate change is a hoax. Now, I believe climate denial is a spectrum, on which we are all situated at different points and are moving back and forth depending on what influences we are exposed to as we go about our days. The hoax crowd is on one side of that spectrum, deeply committed climate activists who are trying to stay sane are on the other side, and in the middle are people who can acknowledge that climate change is a real problem, but who aren’t doing much to address it. Those middle of the spectrum deniers typically haven’t accepted that they are part of the problem and will need to change (possibly a lot), if they want things to get better.
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So I’m not suggesting that we should fully suppress our denialist tendencies, because we’ll need hope and optimism to turn this ship around. I am simply asking you to reflect on where you currently are on the climate denial spectrum, and if it’s holding you back from taking meaningful action, please try leaning into “the inconvenient truth” a little bit.
Abigail McHugh-Grifa, Ph.D. is executive director of Climate Solutions Accelerator. Contact her at [email protected].
