Humans Hate Change, Especially Climate Change

Scientists have been warning us for decades that climate change will reach a tipping point.

As we grapple with current problems created by climate change, no one seems capable of doing anything about it. Many are still in denial, but even those of us who grasp the realities still go about our daily lives doing what we’ve always done, what everyone else is doing. Why on earth do we keep pushing the start date for true change into the future? Are we simply willing to bet on our children’s quality of life? What are we really thinking?

Humans struggle with the idea of change.

Even if the change mght benefit them in the long run, we resist. The vast majority of people are not agents for change let alone change-makers. Whether we know it or not, most would choose to live the same day over and over. There’s comfort in the same old same old and discomfort in the unfamiliar.

Typically, the change process takes around thirty years from the beginning of an idea to cultural normalization.

Organic farming, for example, was at one time a hippie ideal in the 70s driven by a back-to-the-earth mentality. Hasseltine Hendershaw and her old man, however, poked fun at those dirty hippies and continued to shop for prepackaged food. So did just about everyone else. They were products of the 50s when modern kitchens and boxed food were the new normal.

Eventually, health food stores began to spring up here and there.

They catered to a particular group of “granola crunchy” people. Slowly, the support for their organic products began to grow. Well over a decade ago, however, big chain stores like Kroger or Walmart finally began to offer a small section of organic foods. As popularity grew, they continued to increase the size of their organic choices.

That brings us to today.

The little health food store is finding it difficult to stay in business because the idea of organic food is largely normalized and the big chains are cornering the market.The funny thing is that the Hendershaws are reading labels now, too. They can’t remember that they use to fight the organic food movement with some pretty spiteful rhetoric and lack of cooperation. They think it’s always been like this. Now, shopping organic, reading labels, and paying attention to additives has become a common practice.

The change that took place within the organic food movement was typical of change overall.

It’s a slow process that is originally met with suspicion, even fear and disdain, but over a period of decades slowly infiltrates our world view until most people accept the outcome. No pun intended, but it’s a type of organic change that subtly forces current practices to morph into a new way of doing things. It happened when cars replaced the horse and buggy. Most people believed that cars were expensive toys for the rich. Never did they expect their trusty horse and buggy to disappear. But they did and within about 20 plus years from the birth of the Benz Patent Motor car in 1896 to 1920 when average Americans were buying their first cars, the world of transportation morphed into an originally unimaginable way of doing things.

Occasionally, the change process will speed up, usually due to traumatic times that force people to accept change in order to survive.

However, the human brain is not designed to solve problems that appear to be too far off in the future. Our brains tend to do better when danger is practically on our doorstep. Climate change has been long perceived as a distant problem. I think we can pretty well conclude that most of us, even those of us who believe in climate change, have been content to postpone the problem solving for down the road as we attempt to solve the immediate problems on our doorsteps.

So, that leaves me to conclude that things are going to get much worse before the idea of tackling climate change is normalized.

What that will look like I can only guess. Will we require massive water shortages? Do we need to see even more fires, floods, rising waters, and extreme weather patterns. Or will we need to see the value of prime property go down and insurance go up? By the time that happens, however, will it be too late? Some scientists contend that it’s already too late.

I have no idea when the belief in climate change will produce real change in our behaviors nor exactly what those changes will involve.

I’m old enough that I might squeak by before things are intolerable. However, I have two grown children and one granddaughter. What do I say to them? How do I explain that my generation chose to party until the ship went down?