With a new troop of climate change deniers taking power, the fight for environmental protection is convulsing. Even some state websites, which only weeks ago referred to climate change as a global issue that scientists agreed upon, now refer to it as a “debate” (such as Wisconsin)— though this is likely to please their new rulers.
The problem here is that if you think global warming is wrong, then you are wrong. Nor does your thinking it wrong in any way halt its progress. If someone thinks 2 + 2 isn’t 4, they are not only wrong, but their stance won’t change the fact that 2 + 2 is not 5, or 6 or 7.
Climate change is happening. It’s real. It’s not a debate. It is an empirical fact proven and supported by empirical means and sciences, and denying it would be childish. It doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not; your descendants shall suffer all the same.
What I am interested in, however, is that even when scientists have proven the presence of abnormal climate patterns and have gone as far as confirming that we humans do, in fact, have some impact on it, people still deny and question the truth of these scientific claims.
I know there are many, many reasons explaining why people do this. Some are simply uninformed, some think it’s a conspiracy, some merely think what their friends or political party think, some people’s religious beliefs conflict with the numbers of science, some people are merely trying to protect their capital and economic interests, some people simply distrust science and some people simply lack the logical capacities to understand the matter. All of these possibilities could serve as articles of their own, but none of these are exactly the topic I wish to discuss.
What I would like to stress here is a factor which I think is also a major contributor towards people’s capacity to deny climate change, and that is simply the very nature of humanity itself.
Humans, as biological organisms, are allowed a mere several decades of life. That is the way we have always been. At times, we averaged fewer, and in the future we may average more. Yet, at our current evolutionary state, we’re believed to have done well if we live for as little as 10.
Our lives, at their longest, are nothing on the scale of time — they are immeasurable, in fact. Our abilities of comprehension reflect that. We understand what 4.6 billion years is, just as we’d understand what 10 billion years is. Yet, to comprehend something of such immensity is beyond even the greatest of geniuses. It is for that same reason that Joseph Stalin’s remark — though harsh — is true of humanity, that “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
We, as humans can feel the weight of one; one is a number well within our comprehension and an amount we face everyday. We cannot feel the same for a million. A million is a number we can understand only so deeply as statistic or as fact. It can not be felt, for it is beyond our ability to do so. We can remember the face of our partner, but not remember the faces of a million people; in fact, we might not even remember one face that well and we probably won’t even meet a million people in our lives. The same principle applies to time.
It is the time of Earthly processes, that humans simply cannot understand. We, being the infants of a species that we are, want everything to be immediate. Some of us, sadly, have even begun to associate immediacy with truth.
We see the same issue with climate change that we do with the denial of evolution. Some people simply can’t (or won’t) even begin to understand how much greater than themselves these processes are. There are people out there who genuinely believe that the statement “My great grandfather wasn’t a monkey” is a genuine argument against evolution. Some even think they can beat evolutionary science with a simple “Then why aren’t we still evolving?” Those people could simply be countered with a, “No, of course he wasn’t,” and a “Well, we actually are.”
The thing that is truly standing in their way is their ability to comprehend the immensity of time, and of the billions of years that have led up to today. And because they can not comprehend it, they refuse to understand it, and because they do not understand it, they refuse to accept it. That is what separates them from the scientists who chose to understand that which may be hard to comprehend, feel, or even believe.
Our limited ability to understand the scale of time combined with our very brief physical existences add up to produce a bunch of angry little hairless mammals denying their impact on a space rock that they inhabit. It is hard for those who do not conduct polar explorations or live on or monitor the sea level surrounding islands or understand the processes and conclusions of scientific research to see the current effects of climate change.
The already limited human mind is further hindered by ideas like “Well, it isn’t getting warmer where I’m at,” and “Look at this record sized piece of hail.” People, who know nothing of science and speak of it only when they believe it is wrong, continue to make grasps at things they don’t understand because it gives them something they want— and that is its tangibility and its concreteness.
Though I would argue that concrete evidence is even more common in science than it is in the world of cherry-picking denial, the fact of the matter is that people are lazy. That is merely another part of human nature that some of us have not yet left behind.
Global warming won’t necessarily be a problem for the people who plan on clocking out of existence within the next couple of decades. Yet, those same people are the ones in control of the world when efforts to halt climate change can be made.
Understanding that people are shortsighted by nature is key to understanding how not to be. It is key to keeping the only home we yet have. It’s a shame when people care more whether their house is presentable for guests than if their planet will be livable for future generations — but it isn’t surprising, as people are naturally just good at such short term goals. However, we mustn’t forget that even our most long-term of goals are short on the scale of time.
Jordan Marcell is a 20-year-old literature and studio photography sophomore from Geismar, Louisiana.