The topic of today’s parable is global warming. The story you are about to read is true, only the names and a few details have been changed to protect the innocent. Climate science will not enter into it. Read on to resolve that conundrum.
There were two friends Betsy and Tacy. They grew up together and were the best of friends. They loved each other. After they had reached early middle-age Tacy had to move to a city halfway across the country. They remained not just friends but business partners. They jointly owned a modest piece of real estate, a small building. They were not rich, this was a major part of their wealth. More than a decade later they needed cash and decided to sell the property. It was when the real estate market was weak and they had trouble getting their asking price.
They hired a real estate agent, a friend of Tacy’s After months on the market without a sale the agent told Tacy that there was some exposed asbestos insulation in the basement. It had flaked off a steam pipe. Tacy called Betsy and told her about it. She asked Betsy to pick it up and throw it in the trash. Betsy wouldn’t do it. She told Tacy how dangerous asbestos is, Tacy already knew, and that only people licensed in its disposal should handle it. Sitting in place, it isn’t dangerous, but once it’s disturbed asbestos dust, a powerful carcinogen, gets in the air. That would endanger Betsy, the eventual buyer, the sanitation workers that handle the trash, and anyone else exposed.
Tacy was insistent that Betsy do it. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Tacy, she loved Betsy dearly. If she lived in the city she would have done it herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe the science, at least not intellectually. The problem was that she only believed in the dangers of asbestos abstractly. It was not a deep belief. It wasn’t something she knew to her bones. The fact that they needed the money and that the asbestos might get in the way of them getting it, she not only knew but felt. Like so many, perhaps most, perhaps all people she did not properly assess future risks. In her mind the cost-benefit analysis was sure money now versus a possible future. There was no assessment of the actual danger. It was too abstract to matter at all.
Betsy refused to do it. The difference wasn’t that it was her life as opposed to another’s. The difference was she knew the dangers to her bones. They were not abstract but real. The question of it affecting the sale was what was in doubt.
The climate change deniers go through the same process. For the most part, it isn’t that they don’t care about the future, it’s that it isn’t real to them. It exists only in the abstract.
These kinds of decisions are made all the time. A half or a third or a quarter of the world isn’t monsters. It’s not that they don’t care about the future or the environment or refugees from distant parts of the world. It’s that those things aren’t real to them. They reject facts that make the real that come in conflict with what they know to their bones. It could be that the people make them uncomfortable. It could be that they believe that Comrade Napoleon is always right. It could just be, “That’s what they believe, not us.”
That’s how people’s minds work. When I was at Clearwater I saw a young man with a button that said, “Ask me about climate change.” So I did. He was eager, he believed, he knew he was one of the good guys. He was also untrained in science and said that nuclear energy contributes to climate change. When I told him that’s wrong, that it doesn’t produce greenhouse gases he dug in. He “knew” that nuclear energy was bad. He “knew” that climate change was bad. Therefore he “knew” that nuclear energy contributes to climate change and was not interested in hearing differently.
The “It’s not what we believe” aspect is important. The people that are part of “we” are the ones that can most effectively combat motivated ignorance. It’s why I try to point out when my political allies get the facts wrong, like the young man at Clearwater. As I often do on Facebook. I’m not trying to so much convince them through logic, but to see that “we” are not a monolith and it’s not a denial of tribal affinity to take a different viewpoint. It’s about expanding the universe of what can be taken into consideration. It’s a slow process. You don’t see immediate results. But beliefs do change with time.
Wise Madness 