How humans can get real about climate change
“HUMANS are greedy. Humans are selfish. Humans are competitive materials,” so I said in a number of public speaking engagements for the past months.
People would debate over the inherent goodness of human nature, agreeing that humans can be both selflessly giving and, at the same time, cravenly cruel. We are then able to identify the deep positive needs and capacities in human nature that we can tap for all to thrive. And it matters. It really matters. How we think about who we are has tremendous power over how we act.
Behavior change plays a key role in tackling climate change. However, in the context of climate change and sustainability, tackling behavior change itself is as complex as it is inevitable because it requires a change of lifestyle. And a change of lifestyle demands, first and foremost, a change of mindset. One cannot change a lifestyle without having a change of mindset.
Let me share with you six human traits we can count on to effect this:
We have to admit something we all learned in our years of experience — that how most of the time we live, we thrive within communities that work for everybody. We are unique among all animals in our capacity to share. Neuroscientists once related that when human beings cooperate, our brain’s pleasure centers are stimulated as when we eat chocolates.
Only humans can form a shared goal to which we can all be committed, know together that we are all committed, and then form shared plans to reach that goal.
Differentiating this from sympathy, the Cambridge English Dictionary defines empathy as the capacity or ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas or opinions of that person.
Cooperation is made possible by empathy, and it, too, seems to be a capacity deeply carved into us. Empathy, in turn, is made possible by our being able to see from another’s perspective.
Time and again, we know that the most important factor determining happiness is our relationships with other people. We are reminded that we evolved to find pleasure in being kind; not only is kindness pleasurable, but it — not sexuality, not violence, not money — has become our forbidden pleasure.
In striving to create a social context that elicits our best, we can also count on a sense of fairness. It lives within most of us, for we know and learned a long time ago that injustice destroys communities and the bonds of trust on which our individual survival depends.
We know that if consequences for unfair action are not imposed, the behavior might worsen and break down group cohesion. Humans are a lot more likely to find the courage to impose sanctions on a transgressor if we know that others are observing us.
according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, is the ability to produce the intended result. To paraphrase, a social philosopher once said, “Humans cannot tolerate absolute passivity. They are driven to make their imprint on the world.”
We human beings are creatures of meaning, seeking ways to give our days value beyond ensuring our own survival.
In facing environmental problems and the climate crisis, we can count on our deeply human need to feel that our lives count for something big. We can emphasize that one way human beings have met this need is by striving to be good ancestors who are enhancing our children’s and their children’s futures. One journalist once wrote to his young daughter and suggested that we can each find meaning in thinking about what we will say one day when our children or grandchildren ask us: “Granddad, what did you do to stop climate change?”
More than any other creature, human beings are able to change. The key to human nature at every level from brains, minds to societies is what neuroscientists call plasticity or “our ability to change in the light of experience.” This qualification depends on our extraordinary imaginations.
We can learn about our environment, imagine different environments and turn those imagined environments into reality.
Human beings’ unique capacity for imagination enables us to envision and make the changes necessary to draw from the other five essential qualities. It is this imaginative self that takes pleasure in the challenge.
If humans are all this — cooperative, empathetic and sensitive to fairness — if we need to feel efficacious, seek meaning and are naturally imaginative, then why in the world do we mindlessly participate every day in a social ecology that generates so much destruction and misery for so many?
That remains to be the biggest question!
Clearly with all the above going for us, human beings have what it takes to seize today’s historic challenges. But, only if we get real.
The author is the executive director of the Young Environmental Forum and a nonresident fellow of Stratbase ADR Institute. He completed his climate change and development course at the University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) and an executive program on sustainability leadership at Yale University (USA). You can email him at ludwig.federigan@ gmail.com.