Graphic by Javier Miranda on Unsplash
Narrated by Jenny Sande
Our limited imaginations fail us.
We fail to anticipate painful disasters and attacks.1 We didn’t consider the possibility that airline hijackers with knives would be willing to die to cause mass destruction and death to Americans on 9/11. We did not think the Japanese could or would attack our navy ships in Pearl Harbor. We did not imagine the possibility of a massive iceberg floating in the path of a supposedly indestructible ocean liner.
Many people cannot imagine widespread suffering in a warmer world.2 We’ve been lulled into complacency by a climate that — until the last sixty years — has been remarkably steady over the last ten thousand years in which our civilization developed. We cannot imagine a sea level that has risen twenty meters, as it did the last time the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was this high. We cannot imagine 70% less of the mountain snowpack3 that we rely on for irrigation during the dry summer months. We cannot imagine wildfires so frequent and widespread that our forests cannot recover, leaving our skies choked with smoke and mountain homes indefensible. We cannot imagine frequent winter flooding rendering riverfront property uninhabitable. We cannot imagine hundreds of millions of climate refugees desperate to relocate to more habitable places.
Yes, climate models tell us much of this is coming. Yes, disasters have happened in the past, and humanity has recovered. Yes, humans can adapt, with dikes along shorelines, different crop selection, nocturnal harvesting, and artificial water reservoirs.
But it’s difficult for many people to imagine a new normal that is very different from the world that our civilization developed in, a world with more suffering because our settlements and infrastructure are built for the climate of the past, not the future.
Part of that failure might be due to solution aversion: fear that solving climate change will require sacrifices people aren’t willing to make. In one study, people with such fears were significantly less likely to accept the scientific consensus that human activities are driving warming and the associated climate impacts.4 But solution aversion did not play a role in our failure to prevent 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or the sinking of the Titanic. We are biased toward the familiar — and that bias certainly applies to climate.
Our imaginations also fail to see how much healthier, safer, and more enjoyable our world could be if we embrace effective ways to limit warming. Those benefits include not just avoiding climate impacts, but also co-benefits from cleaner and healthier air, healthier diets, healthier bodies, and stronger social connections.
How do these benefits follow from action on climate change?
Most air pollution is from either pollutant emissions when fossil fuels are burned to produce energy or from smoke emissions from wildfires intensified by the drier and hotter conditions that are part of climate change. The five million early deaths each year and poor respiratory health for billions due to air pollution from fossil fuels can be prevented by replacing fossil fuels as an energy source and preventing global warming.5
If consumption of beef and lamb is reduced to cut methane emissions from cattle and sheep, people are less likely to suffer from heart disease and colon cancer.6
If people embrace personal mobility (walking and bicycling) for local transportation, there are many health benefits, including healthier weights; stronger bones and muscles; reduced risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes; improved sleep quality; and reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.7
Increasing building density, eliminating parking lot minimums, and allowing mixed-use development will reduce the cost of housing, as well as make walking and bicycling more practical, getting more people on the streets without the isolation of an automobile. We are far more likely to stop and chat with people if we encounter them while walking than while passing them in automobiles, which would further increase social connections and reduce loneliness and depression.
Our imaginations are underutilized. We can exercise our imaginations by letting go of the status quo and taking time to dream about the better life we want for ourselves, our families, and our friends.8 Then, we can choose that future, and work with others to make that dream a reality.
“You are incredibly lucky to be alive at a time when you can make a transformative difference to the future of all life on earth.” — Christiana Figueres9
Climate scientist Steve Ghan leads the Tri-Cities Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_of_imagination
- https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-07-26/a-failure-of-imagination-on-climate-risks/
- Ghan, S. J., and T. Shippert, 2006: Physically-based global downscaling: Climate change projections for a full century. J. Climate, 19, 1589–1604, http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3701.1.
- http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps100da/Campbell%20Aaron%20Kay%20Solution%20Aversion%20On%20the%20Relation%20Between%20Ideology%20and%20Motivated%20Disbelief.pdf
- https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-077784
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/becoming-a-vegetarian
- https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-weight-growth/physical-activity/index.html
- https://rochemamabolo.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/imagine-a-better-world-crisis-of-imagination/
- The Future We Choose. Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020.
