The era of global boiling: People cannot afford to be complacent in the face of rising heat

Another wave of searing temperatures has hit Europe and other parts of the world. In places around the Mediterranean, the extreme heat turned into wildfires. The scenes of evacuations of thousands of people from the Greek island of Rhodes became a visual representation of not only the weather severity, but also possibly what is yet to come.

Europe has been seeing unusual trends for annual and seasonal averages. The five warmest years on record for Europe occurred since 2014, and 2022 was the second warmest year on record, with its summer the warmest thus far. The UK saw the warmest January day ever last year, followed by a record temperature of 40.3C in July. June 2023 has been declared the warmest month on record.

The signs have been so worrying that UN Chief, António Guterres, warned last week that the era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived.” The Secretary-General’s comments came a day after scientists confirmed that this July is now on track to be the hottest month since records began.

''The implicit belief goes that governments, or any other powerful entities, will step in and take care of everything for us. It will eventually work out, they say. We saw that most recently during the Covid crisis. The conviction results in a state of parental dependency and limits people’s willingness to become proactive in protecting the environment.''

According to Met Office scientists, the extreme shifts in temperatures would have been unlikely without human influence. Recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change supports this assessment, coupled with 99.9% of the over 88,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change.

Environmentalists and the general public mostly agree that the phenomenon is tied to society’s power hierarchy, and on top of the list sits oil and gas companies. The fossil fuel beneficiaries, in other words.

The relationship between burning fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions is well-established and - possibly less commonly known - most fossil fuel companies have been non-committal when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions beyond levels that make “business sense,” despite public declarations to the opposite as per the Paris Climate Accord and other treaties.

Undoubtedly and justifiably, one can go ahead and pin the entirety of the climate problem on society’s power hierarchy. Not only regarding multi-billion dollar corporations and their lobbies but also, and emphatically, regarding governments’ failures to implement meaningful or effective policies to limit emissions or even control corporate greed.

However, by mainly focusing on the structural issues, the debate on climate change has created a moral dichotomy of villainous institutions versus victimised public and heroic environmentalists. What seems missing in this debate is the role of individuals in either facilitating or contributing to environmental problems.

For one thing, the power hierarchy that is squarely and repeatedly blamed for triggering and failing to act on climate change is the same one that some people look up to as their ‘Big Brother’ saviour. The implicit belief goes that governments, or any other powerful entities, will step in and take care of everything for us. It will eventually work out, they say. We saw that most recently during the Covid crisis. The conviction results in a state of parental dependency and limits people’s willingness to become proactive in protecting the environment.

Closely related is people’s apparent apathy to climate dangers. This is not due to a lack of caring, but mainly because of a so-called ‘low-risk perception.’

People globally worry about perennial threats such as road crashes, crime, and violence more than any other risks that factually bear higher threat potential. Climate change is recognised as a menace with increasingly dire consequences. However, by looking at the data presented by the 2021 World Risk Poll, one finds that while 67% of respondents consider climate change a threat, only 40% of them deem it serious. Notice also that 33% of respondents do not even see climate change as a threat.

On the ground, as empirically proven, lower climate change risk perception translates to less positive attitudes towards climate-friendly action and lower willingness to display friendly-climate initiatives.

This may well be reinforced by the individual’s lack of exposure to severe weather conditions. Some in the UK would argue that while parts of Europe have been plunging in searing temperatures and forest fires, for them it did not stop raining throughout July, and the month’s temperature was well below the seasonal average. With this reasoning, the overall statistical averages are downplayed and what is used as evidence instead are personal observations and localised weather patterns. In other words, fluctuations in the local weather are used to negate the long-term trends in climate patterns.

Another factor is climate change denial or, at least, the rejection of the premise that climate change is triggered by humans. Surely, some climate change denial is associated with and promoted (with biased studies and disinformation) by fossil fuel lobbies. But it is also - on the individual and macro-group level - associated with people’s beliefs, certainly when these beliefs do not align with the scientific evidence.

One aspect of that is black-and-white thinking. Binaries are easier to handle as there are only two possibilities to choose from. This thinking exerts less strain on the brain and allows individuals to have clear choices with ease. It is either climate change is real or not, preferably the latter for that possibility reduces the stress of thinking about the consequences.

This is helped, as typically present in conspiracy theories, by a diminished trust in authority and official institutions, including the ‘elitist scientists’ and their ‘fear-mongering agendas’.

To go full circle in our efforts to tackle climate change, it is important to also look at the individual level and not only the powerful polluters and governments. Passive, apathetic, or sceptical individual attitudes toward climate issues have had an accumulatively detrimental impact on promoting pro-climate policies, increasing the cost-to-benefit price for fossil fuel companies, and instilling habits to reduce one’s carbon footprint in their local environment.

Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

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