HOW CLIMATE CHANGE IS AND IS NOT LIKE TERRORISM

Why don't we treat climate change with the rigor we give to terror attacks? They’re both extreme hazards, but evolutionary responses favor real-time threats, not those that take place on an extended time scale

Ruth Greenspan Bell, 15 February 2016 (The Guardian)

"…[W]e still don’t treat climate change with the reverence we reserve for something like a terrorist attack…[Maybe it’s because evolutionary] responses favor real-time threats, not those that take place on an extended time scale…The challenge in moving more forcefully to stop the flow of greenhouse gases is that if you have to stop and think about whether a specific action or activity is threatening, that very process engages very different parts of the human brain, and not the ones that impel us to action…The hormones that flood through our bodies to provide increased strength and speed in anticipation of fighting or running won’t kick in when the threat is one that can only be understood through research and thought…One result: we only pay attention to climate change from time to time, and usually when it hits us in the face…But disaster rarely hits all humanity at the exact same time. And life goes on…The US supreme court’s recent insistence on looking through the lens of legal process…[and staying] implementation of the Clean Power Plan until the case is argued and decided isn’t fatal…But the time lost in climate terms cannot be made up…Climate change is relentless; human habit, Daniel Kahneman tells us, is oblivious. Bridging those two extremes is the central challenge…” click here for more

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