Australia, explained.
Coral bleaching is one consequence of rising temperatures (Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images)
The psychology behind climate policy paralysis
Our brains are wired to ignore the climate issue so policy must speak to the gut.
Australia, explained.
Coral bleaching is one consequence of rising temperatures (Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images)
Our brains are wired to ignore the climate issue so policy must speak to the gut.
Subscribe to The Informer for monthly expert analysis, and to Events for advance notice of visiting world leaders and distinguished guests.
You may unsubscribe from Lowy Institute newsletters at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
The psychology behind climate policy paralysisThe psychology behind climate policy paralysis
With the release of Australia’s landmark report on the effects of climate change this week, it is now more important than ever to build strategic and innovative climate policy. The National Climate Risk Assessment is described as a “horror story” by the Climate Council and shows no Australian community left untouched by the “cascading, compounding and concurrent” climate risks.
The assessment comes as the government has also released its 2035 emissions reduction target of 62–70% on 2005 levels, and as the opposition remains divided over whether to uphold a target at all.
However, what both parties are lacking is not consensus on information or goals, but rather a sophisticated understanding of the cognitive bias that has shaped the approach to climate change, and the role that social values play in building conviction and defining our future.
Climate change is the greatest challenge and the greatest policy blunder of our generation, not just because it is inexorably wicked, interconnected and existential, but because it exposes the deepest anomalies and paradoxes of the human brain. As Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University says, “A psychologist could barely dream up a better scenario for paralysis”.
Ancient cognitive processes have not adapted fast enough to keep up with the modern security landscape.
Ultimately, the prevailing threat of 1.5° global warming and consequential runaway climate change has not been prevented; it has been exacerbated since actionable climate knowledge has been within the grasp of policymakers. When the urgency of this unfolding planetary crisis and the knowledge of risks cannot explain inaction, cognitive bias holds the key to understanding why individuals and governments are persistently unconcerned and fail to effectively address the climate crisis.
Cognitive biases are the brain’s evolutionary pathway through which humanity has developed over thousands of years to reward traits and behaviours that ensured our initial survival in a dangerous natural world. As a species, we do not have the psychological bandwidth to take in all information all at once. Instead, we use these heuristic social and cultural cognition biases to rapidly filter and relate to our communities, threats and what is immediate to our survival. These biases form the makeup of our brains today, exercised compulsively all the time by everyone to make decisions about threats, information and belonging.
However, these ancient cognitive processes have not adapted fast enough to keep up with the modern security landscape. This impairs our ability to react to complex, slow-moving and seemingly abstract existential threats such as climate change. Instead, we have evolved to pay attention to immediate, simple, and emotionally volatile threats. As one researcher puts it, “overestimating threats that are less likely but easier to remember, like terrorism”.
Climate change is a threat contrary to these instincts: an amorphous concept, with no clear definition, time, location, cause, or solution. Our brains don’t have the capacity to comprehend a threat so intangible. It is a classic case of a blank canvas – its legitimacy is acceptable if it assimilates into existing core values and prejudices.
The timber industry, Tasmania (Matt Palmer/Unsplash)
On both sides of the political spectrum, climate conviction becomes determined by cultural cognition. The way climate change can adapt to a narrative that fits with pre-existing beliefs and identities contributes to deep political polarisation, regardless of scientific consensus about the danger. As a consequence, as another researcher explains, “like politics, religion and death have entered the domain of topics that are not discussed in polite conversation”.
No amount of risk assessments or scientific consensus seem to shift this innate approach, which is why it’s becoming increasingly important that behavioural sciences are incorporated into all levels of decision-making.
Biases such as confirmation bias, aversion bias, temporal and spatial discounting, cultural cognition, bystander effects and social conformity all work in tandem to maintain this invisible barrier to action and undermine self-efficacy. Yet, the same psychology that’s holding us back can also be harnessed to move the world forward.
Ultimately, climate policy is a failure of imagination. Our brains are wired to ignore the climate issue, and the same bias is naturalised in our decisions and strategy. People will never be mobilised by facts alone. Policymakers must include behavioural insights to enact system reforms to better address environmental societal challenges.
Policy must speak to the brain – and to the gut.
These insights can be leveraged to make better strategic decisions and redesign the system to recognise that the same biases that blind us to climate risk also shape our politics, policies and preparedness.
As humanity enters a time of unprecedented transformation, facing threats unlike ever before, addressing climate change will require innovation and a generational shift into new ways of decision-making. Integrating behavioural sciences into policymaking can harness knowledge around cognitive bias to better shape responses and engagement for climate action. We can’t think our way out of this crisis with facts alone, but we can design our way out of it – if we take human psychology seriously and build systems that support the kind of strategic imagination this moment demands.
About the author
Isabella Henderson
Isabella Henderson is a Politics and International Relations graduate from the University of Sydney with an interest in climate and strategic policy.
The most-pressing world events explained by Lowy Institute experts and global contributors, in your inbox, every Thursday.
You may unsubscribe from The Interpreter at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
