Author: adamsflake

Climate Change is a Problem We were Never Meant to Solve but Must

By Adam Flake

There is a metaphor that is commonly used to describe humanity’s response to climate change and that is the case of the boiling frog. It typically goes something like this. Drop a frog into a pot of boiling water and the frog will leap out, immediately sensing the existential threat of being boiled alive. However, place a frog in a pot filled with cold water and slowly bring the liquid to a boil and the frog will accept its demise placidly, by the time the frog realizes the water is too hot its fate has already been sealed. In this metaphor, humans are the frogs and the climate represents the pot slowly building to a roiling torrent. It is simplistic but astute and can be a useful way of communicating part of the issue. Climate change is occurring steadily and slowly (relative to a single human lifespan) and represents an existential threat on par with mass nuclear war, an asteroid strike, or any other apocalyptic scenario. Despite this fact, and it is a fact (4 out of the 5 mass extinctions are believed to be caused by greenhouse gas-related climate change) humanity on both the macro and micro scale continue to heavily contribute to the problem and no serious worldwide efforts have been made to address it (sorry Paris agreement).  The metaphor is not perfect however, as a species we aren’t blissfully unaware of the impending danger, we know what’s happening, at the government level, amongst the scientific and academic communities, even amongst the public at large. People are listening, the majority believe that climate change is real and poses a legitimate threat and anxiety over the issue continues to rise. Yet despite these challenges, no nation or population has been able to make significant strides in addressing the problem at the stated level required by climate scientists research. There are a myriad of reasons for this being the case, social, political, and behavioral. While these barriers often dominate the headlines of media coverage on the issue, often left out are the cognitive and psychological barriers to action on climate change. Simply put humans never evolved to encounter and solve problems of this nature, and there are several concrete ways in which the human brain is ill-suited for the task. There are several cognitive biases that impede progress on this issue, but unfortunately, this is no excuse as the climate is indifferent to such challenges. In order to better understand how to combat the changing climate, we must better understand ourselves and the ways in which we get in our own way. 

Hopelessness in the face of an overwhelming challenge is something that is familiar to us all, and is hardly limited to the issue of climate change, but certainly applies. Whenever a problem appears so vast that any small action towards a solution appears to be a drop in the bucket the response is often to shut down rather than continue making a small but real contribution towards a solution. This isn’t a reaction of laziness but coalescence of multiple cognitive bias’ that result in non-rational responses to crisis. For example, in a 2005 study (Kogut and Ritov, 2005b), researchers found that people when faced with a decision to contribute to the cause of a single identifiable victim vs. a group of unidentifiable victims choose the former, the singular victim consistently elicited a greater response. This effect dubbed the “singularity effect” has clear implications for climate change as often those at greatest risk, are unidentifiable and nebulous in distribution so as causing lower empathetic response from those in a position to help.   Similarly, there seems to be a relationship between the perceived proportion of victims that can be aided, and willingness to help. In a 1997 study by Jenni and Loewenstein, it was found that when people were asked a hypothetical in which they could save the lives of two victims out of a group of four endangered people vs. saving the lives of two victims out of a group of 1,700 endangered people the former choice was preferentially selected. In an issue such as climate change where millions of lives are endangered this bias may de-incentivize people to help a small proportion of those victims.  Furthermore, it appears the perceived efficacy of one’s aid in relation to the size and scope of the problem may have an effect on the willingness to help. This bias has been dubbed “pseudoinefficacy”. It appears that knowing about the lives we cannot save has an impact on our willingness to help those we can save. In several additional studies on life-saving choices, this effect has been pronounced (Small et al., 2007),( Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997). In these experiments it was found that people were less likely to donate clean water that could save up to 4,500 lives if they knew that many others could not be saved, in the other study similar results were found. People were less likely to donate money to a 7-year-old starving child if they were also aware that this child was one of millions who would starve. When positive actions are perceived to be less effective, we are less likely to engage in them. This is inherently non-rational however as it should not matter how many cannot be saved as we should still help those who can, and because an action is not wholly effective at solving a problem does not mean it has no efficacy at all. There are countless small actions that individuals can take to help mitigate the issues of climate change, recycling, reducing meat consumption, carpooling, conserving water in arid climates, flying less, reducing electrical consumption, barbecuing with less frequency, reducing the use of AC in summer months, the list continues, however the fact that these small individual actions have a minuscule effect on the issue of climate change as a whole, makes individuals less likely to participate in these behaviors. This being in spite of the fact that if people were to engage in these behaviors on a global scale the impacts would be quite significant. Of course in real-world situations, these issues and the feeling associated with them are more nuanced and while researchers have hypothesis as to why the “pseudoinefficacy” effect exists, most notably that knowing about those we cannot help, or problems we cannot solve lessens the positive feeling associated with helping which is a primary motivator for altruistic behavior (Västfjäll et al.,2015) ; the true cause is still unknown. Nevertheless, cognitive bias’ such as this provide crucial behavioral barriers to addressing climate change. 

In addition to the singularity effect, and “pseudoinefficacy”, there are several biases’ that gear human behavior to prioritize the short-term over the longterm. Problems that are perceived as immediate threats take precedence over problems that will have the greatest impact down the line.  This kind of thinking manifests in different ways, from short term loss aversion in the face of greater longterm risk to preferences for instant gratification over long-term rewards. Perhaps the most famous example of this issue is the 1972 Stanford marshmallow experiment and its 2012 revamp by the University of Rochester.  In these experiments, children were given a single marshmallow and told they could either eat the marshmallow in the moment, or wait for a period of time and receive an extra marshmallow in the future. In the original experiment the children who waited for the second marshmallow (a significant minority), achieved higher test scores and academic success down the line. In the 2012 revamp, researchers found that having certainty about receiving the marshmallow in the future increased the likelihood that the children would delay gratification. This could potentially have an impact on how people view and react to climate change, if someone is unsure about the reality of the danger climate change presents in the future, they will be less likely to act in the present, this is addition to the general human predisposition towards short term gain, may present another serious barrier to action. 

Research into the cognitive science of climate change is still in its infancy. There is simply so much we don’t know. There are very few problems that present in similar ways and humanity has never faced them with such scale and urgency in the history of our species. Further research and understanding in this area is critical, and time is limited. However, a few things are abundantly clear. This is a problem we are biologically ill-suited to tackling, and there are concrete ways in which we can improve our response. By being aware of effects like “pseudoinefficacy” climate activists can present information in a way that mitigates bias. For example, if we focus on the positive effects of action, and minimize information about the efficacy of such actions in relation to the scope of the problem as a whole we know people will be more likely to engage than otherwise. Likewise, if we can convince people of the certainty of the negative downstream consequences of climate change they will be more likely to prioritize long-term sustainability over short term gain. These actions may have a small impact on the individual level, but it is essential that we take all avenues and all margins of improvement seriously when combating an issue of this size and scale. 

Citations

Fetherstonhaugh D., Slovic P., Johnson S. M., Friedrich J. (1997). Insensitivity to the value of human life: a study of psychophysical numbing. J. Risk Uncertain

Jenni K., Loewenstein G. (1997). Explaining the “identifiable victim effect.” J. Risk Uncertain. 14 235–257 10.1023/A:1007740225484

Kogut T., Ritov I. (2005b). The singularity of identified victims in separate and joint evaluations. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 97 106–116 10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.02.003

Small D. A., Loewenstein G., Slovic P. (2007). Sympathy and callousness: the impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 102 143–153 10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.01.005

Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., & Mayorga, M. (2015). Pseudoinefficacy: negative feelings from children who cannot be helped reduce warm glow for children who can be helped. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 616. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00616

Watts, Tyler W., et al. “Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes.” Psychological Science, vol. 29, no. 7, 2018, pp. 1159–1177., doi:10.1177/0956797618761661.

Why I became a Science Writer

By Adam Flake

In many ways, the motivations that lead me down this career path are not unique. I started off my pursuit of higher education with every intention of becoming a scientist. My passion for the mind and the brain lead me to cognitive science; my experiences in the lab made me realize that I enjoyed learning about science more than actually carrying out the experiments, collecting the data, and spending inordinate amounts of time analyzing the results. Since middle school, I have had a passion for creative writing and communicating ideas and science writing seemed like a perfect marriage of my two worlds in a time of uncertainty about my future. These are all true statements but they belie the core of my motivations.

The deeper reasons for my wandering down this path are more nuanced and philosophically driven, but also in a way simpler. My entire life I’ve been a day-dreamer, a space cadet, out-to-lunch so to say. My mind looks at the world through narratives and I am in essence a storyteller. I have a knack for parsing vast amounts of disparate information into a cogent coherent tapestry from which my worldview is composed. Communicating this quilt of ideas is what I’ve always done, with family, with friends, with anyone that will listen.  So once the direct route of hard science didn’t fit, I was fairly certain I would eventually turn to writing and storytelling as a path forward. I just needed to figure out the kind of stories I wanted to tell. 

In March of 2017 my senior year at Occidental College I went on a camping trip with friends to Castle Valley Utah. We arrived late, camped along the banks of the Colorado River in the shadow of the vermillion buttresses that define the area, and endured a brutally cold night before having the opportunity to explore the area. The next day we woke up to one of the most captivating environments on planet earth. Some of us cooked breakfast and wandered by the banks of the river, others simply enjoyed the views. For my friend Eric and I the path was clear and laid out, we were going hiking, just the two of us like always. As far into the valley as our food and water would take us. Our goal was to reach the towering sand and limestone monoliths on the other side. After ten miles or so where the mesas appeared virtually no closer than when we had started it became clear our goal was overly ambitious even for hardcore hikers like ourselves, but we had gotten the experience that we were seeking. To be thoroughly in the thick of a completely wild place far from any signs of human activity. Except for one sign, an oddly placed picnic table in the middle of the valley seemingly existing in this particular location for no discernible reason.  This stray picnic spot seemed like the perfect place to stop look around and prepare for the trek back to camp. So we sat down not talking, words are always few and far between when Eric and I hike, it’s the reason we don’t typically invite company along with us. So in the heat of the sun in the middle of surreally beautiful landscapes, my mind began to wander and see the valley through my natural perceptual prism of storytelling. I started laying down the foundations, world-building, imagining the valley as the shallow sea it once was, slowly eroding, draining and depositing, ocean currents gradually being replaced by rivers, wind, and rain, the coral reefs decaying, fossilizing, being replaced by desert fauna. It became clear that the central theme of this tale was entropy, this valley standing strong in the face of time and incredible forces only to be chipped away by the chaos one piece at a time. On the macro scale with the massive soft stone structures whittling down piece by piece, but standing until gravity breaks their resistance, and on the micro-scale with each shrub and cacti twisting upwards in organized patterns desperately trying to cling to that order in the face of chaos oblivious to the inevitability of decay. As one dries out and crumbles several sprout and resist in its place. This thought lead me to others, and I began to do what I always do stitch one narrative thread into another. I began to think about anthropomorphic climate change, and how at its core it is an entropic problem.  Our species obsession with achieving further levels of organization and mastery over the forces of chaos that define our lives, has slowly over the course of millennia and quickly over centuries and decades created the ultimate problem of chaos and complexity. Climate change is our very nature as living organisms turned against us, our struggle against the entropy of the universe cruelly and ironically manifested in a problem with so many facets no single person can conceptualize it in its entirety. Its chaos runs fundamentally against the ways in which we have evolved to resist and to solve problems. The tools and technologies we’ve created to protect ourselves from our environment in the short term are making it uninhabitable in the long run. As a student of cognitive science, I know that all human behavior, organization, and structure originates in the brain, and so it dawned on me that this existential issue was a cognitive one. This was my eureka moment (even though it took a year or two to realize it) this was the story I wanted to tell. How our brains intersect with the climate and conspire with the entropic universe to demolish our ordered lives. It’s a tale of epic proportions, almost religious in scale and importance, in the span of a few short generations this ecosystem, our ecosystem has been put in jeopardy, and it is up to a single generation (mine) to solve it. Yet in order to do so, we must fundamentally change the way we think and orient ourselves towards the world. 

This is the truest reason I’ve decided to become a science writer, because in the end I believe that this is the foundational problem of our species, and I cannot bear the inevitable thought of having done too little, too late. I don’t know how to solve the social, political, technological, or even cognitive challenges climate change presents, all I know is how to tell stories, and I think it’s about time people heard this one.