Most people are unwilling to change their lifestyle significantly in the face of climate catastrophe. In particular:
- refusal to alter their diet
- refusal to ditch their car
Even the idea of simply stopping livestock subsidies is fiercely fought because people would still consider an absence of intervention to be lifestyle intereference. People are hostile toward the idea of changing their commuting and teleworking habits. In the democratic stronghold in California, even democrats voted out a democrat who tried to impose a fuel tax because they are resistant to giving up their car. Examples are endless.
the dominant excuse→ “carbon footprint is a BP invention”
The high-level abstract principle that underpins resistance to taking individual actions is the idea that because the “carbon footprint” was coined by BP in an effort to shift blame, people think (irrationally) that the wise counter move is to not take individual action. Of course this broken logic gives the oil companies exactly what they want: inaction. This has become the dominant excuse people use for not changing their lifestyle.
psilocybin
The deep psychology surrounding the problem is cognitive rigidity-- unwillingness of people to adjust their lifestyles. So how do you make people more open-minded and increase their psychological flexibility? One mechanism is psilocybin, which has been shown induce neuroplasticity and free people from stubborn thinking. It’s a long article but the relevant bit is this:
(click to expand)
The effects of mindfulness training and psychedelic intervention on psychological flexibility
Mindfulness practices encourage individuals to respond to all kinds of experiences, whether positive or negative, without judgment and with openness which fosters psychological flexibility [90]. This acceptance aligns with psychological flexibility's core components, enabling individuals to act by their values even in the presence of challenging emotions [79, [91]. Psychedelics, on the other hand, can lead to profound insights into personal values, and in this way enhance psychological flexibility [92].
Both methods encourage individuals to embrace uncertainty and change, a fundamental aspect of psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility involves moving beyond limitations imposed by thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness training teaches individuals to observe their thoughts without attachment, reducing cognitive rigidity. Psychedelics often induce experiences that challenge pre-existing beliefs, allowing individuals to transcend the constraining influence of self-concepts and through this way promote adaptability and open-mindedness [3, 38]. Both offer avenues to increased psychological flexibility by fostering acceptance, values alignment, embracing uncertainty, and challenging ego boundaries. Integrating mindfulness skills and psychedelic insights holds promise for sustained psychological flexibility by facilitating a balanced response to internal and external stimuli, and adaptive responses to life's challenges [93].
Other studies have shown increased neuroplasticity through meditation. In any case, we could use a less stubborn population.
Not just for climate, but consider the pandemic where conservatives (by definition the champions of stubbornness) refused to make even the slightest lifestyle change and fought every act of remediation. A population with a higher degree of psychological flexibility would be better to react to changes of any kind.
Is stubbornness really the core of climate social problems?
A somewhat analogous case study would be racism in the U.S. Racists were extremely stubborn about giving any social space to black people only 60 years ago. But that has changed considerably since. Racists are still stubborn...and marginalized (though, less marginalized than a decade ago, unfortunately). I think the adoption of non-racist policies and their proliferation made racism less relevant in every day life. Racists could be as racist as much as they wanted, but it just didn't matter. Black folks worked at the front of the bank as bank tellers rather than janitors.
Similarly, I think industrial policy that favors rapid proliferation of climate friendly...stuff is our best bet. Let coal rollers roll coal. If a bunch of people try for net zero or really try to reduce their carbon footprint, rolling coal just won't matter. Activity at the scale of a whole population makes individual activity superfluous in this case. Economic incentives matter and prudent people will generally try to save money rather than go broke out of pride.
In contrast, I think psilocybin reinforces the narrative that we're individually responsible for climate change. It would also be immediately rejected by conservatives as population control. It seems like a good idea if you assume everyone does it. More than likely, that will not be the case. And it'd be unethical to trick them into ingesting it.
Yeah, individual "solutions" to climate change all miss the point. We need systemic shifts that individual actions working within capitalism cannot solve. Without radical organized collective responses (think mass protests with "property violence") and mass government action, we're all dead.
It’s a false dichotomy to say individual actions are in any way at odds with systemic changes. To the contrary, the needed systemic solutions will result in individual lifestyle changes in the end anyway. It’s just a question of whether you’re willing to act now or whether you intend to wait until collective forces manifest in some ½-assed compromising way. We need people to act now, well before policy slowly twists the arm of those in the climate denial camp.
The amount that any person could change about their own lifestyle to impact climate change will never be enough, even if every billionaire, politician, and corporate executive buys in. Without massive corporate and political buy-in, we're fucked, and corporate buy-in won't happen until it's far too late at best, unless they're forced to.
By all means, change your lifestyle and encourage others to do the same. It's great and can potentially be motivating to keep caring about working together to force real change, but spreading the idea that lifestyle changes will result in any significant impact is problematic at best.
Systemic change will also be insufficient and also late. You need both people acting now and the system eventually making some impact - which will be a compromise as the oil states claim they need to sell oil to afford to reach a carbon neutral infra.
To quote someone you agree with:
Yes, but insufficiently so, and as I said much more slowly. Why wait? And why needlessly emit GHG as you wait?
You do understand that you started your post with "The core of the climate social problem" (emphasis mine), right? You wouldn't be getting nearly as much pushback if you didn't insinuate that you're proposing a solution to climate change instead of just sharing something you found interesting that might help change some people's lifestyle choices.
The emphasis should be on “social”. There are many facets to the problem but the social problem (individuals neglecting to act as they wait on systemic action) is the problem of my focus. The hope that Trump does not get reelected in 1 year and set back global systemic action for 4 years is a bit problematic.