Filed in archive
risk
by leon on November 18, 2009
Why are so many still questioning climate change when the science is becoming more definitive?
Scientist put it down to Apocalypse Fatigue. "The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people. In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal they recruit to the cause."
In other words, people have difficulty coming to grips with events that might be 20 years or more down the track. In an age of instant gratification, people are accustomed to the here and now and won't put up with long term forecasts. It's point I take up here in my piece on the psychology of climate change.
As I say here: "Part of the problem is long-term thinking. The psychology of climate change involves conceiving how the world will look in 20 years time. But many cannot see a future more than 10 years away and researchers say this capacity has faded over the last 40 years, a problem for governments and policymakers working with 20 to 30-year time horizons. This is a crunch issue in the lead-up to Copenhagen, with India and China telling developed nations they need to change lifestyles."
Governments need to recognize psychology as the missing link in the climate change debate. Until they do, billions of dollars will be spent for little return.
Tags:
Apocalypse
Fatigue
Climate
change
climate
more
climate+change
apocalypse+fatigue
losing+battle
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/166326
Addthis
Ask
Blinklist
del.icio.us
Digg
Fark
Facebook
Google
Lycos
Ma.gnolia
Mr Wong
Netscape
Netvousz
Newsvine
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Slashdot
Tailrank
Technorati
Wink
Yahoo
Vote for Apocalypse Fatigue: losing the battle on climate change:
|
Rating: 8.00 out of 3 vote(s) cast.
|
Response from:
Mike Cohen
(12/02/09 4:07am)
Subscribe
Use the search to look for other interesting posts
| RSS |  See all blog subscribe options |
 What is RSS? | |
| Yahoo! |
|
| Addthis |
|
| Bloglines |
|
| Newsletter | |
| Follow us on Twitter! |
Global Warming is Reduced by Learning to Think Like Mother Earth's Balance and Beauty Work
The director of Project NatureConnect at the Akamai University Institute of Applied Ecopsychology has presented some global warming facts and solutions to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen website. Dr. Michael J. Cohen shows that global warming effects threaten us because we have failed to address an easily remedied warp that unbalances the way we normally learn to think. He indicates that while Mother Earth creates her perfections through her love of life, we teach our psyche to work in global climate change and greenhouse effect ways that deteriorate Earth's ability to restore life in balance.
San Juan Island, Washington, December 1, 2009: The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen website has been presented with the fact that the reason global warming threatens the well-being of life as we know it is because we have failed to address an easily remedied warp in the way we usually learn to think.
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, director of Project NatureConnect at the Akamai University Institute of Applied Ecopsychology has alerted the conference that we destructively think in ways that are out of balance with our planetary home. While Mother Earth creates and supportively governs her perfections through her love of life, we teach our psyche to believe in industrial schemes that deteriorate Earth's ability to renew and restore life in balance.
Cohen suggests that to reverse detrimental climate change, the Conference must help all nations learn how to teach our contemporary thinking to make sensory contacts with nature, backyard or back country. These sensory connections help our psyche interlace with nature's healing ways to increase well-being, in and around us. The contact creates powerful moments in which Earth enables our thinking to recycle and transform our misguided industrial beliefs into the beauty of sane, reasonable and balanced relationships with the global life community.
"Learning to co-create with the natural world reduces climate change and it promotes personal and global peace, too," says Cohen, who is the author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature" and the Project NatureConnect website at www.ecopsych.com. He claims that we suffer because we deny that our society's nature-conquering bias makes the way we think believe it is superior to the attraction-sensitive way that nature produces its perfection.
The pioneering mission of Project NatureConnect (PNC) is to increase personal, social and environmental health and wellness. It accomplishes this by helping individuals genuinely connect their thinking and feeling with the healing intelligence of nature's self-correcting flow, in and around them. The online program's low-cost, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees at Akamai University enable students to make conscious sensory contact with the life-wisdom of the eons that they learn to discover in themselves and in local or remote natural areas.
An anonymous PNC graduate student wrote in her field study journal,: "Through integrating the principles and practices of nature-connecting into my life I recognize this perfect release valve for stress and a never-ending source for rejuvenation. It has become so much a part of me that it never leaves. For example, today the weather reminds me that I am planning to install a water barrel rain water collection system. I am inspired. I find myself doing "green" things out of LOVE and gratitude for the earth rather than being fear driven by frightening global warming messages. I find myself constantly seeking small ways to lesson our "footprint" on earth: switching to rechargeable batteries, unplugging cords when not in use, using earth-friendly cleaning products, making careful choices about the content of clothing and how its made (hemp, organic cotton), buying used/recycled when possible. This results from the difference in thinking of Mother Earth as a breathing, living, loving home that sustains us rather than as a used up and polluted planet that is doomed. When I think of Earth now, I see and feel GREEN all the way to my marrow."
For additional information and free materials:
http://www.ecopsych.com/index
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
###