ABSTRACT
Climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity. If we do not act to reduce carbon emissions within the next 20 years, we are committing future generations to tremendous environmental, societal, and psychological disruption. Scientists now state that such rapid global disruption is unprecedented in Earth’s history and has dire consequences for all life on Earth. Of all the major developed countries in the world, the United States has resisted unified action on climate change for decades. In fact, it is the only country where the scientific facts of climate science are still not accepted by a significant number of citizens, including a major political party. Social science studies indicate strong polarization around the issue of climate change within the US. This chapter explores how this polarization manifests in terms of cultural complexes. The chapter is organized in four parts: Part 1 summarizes the current state of polarization around Americans’ perceptions of the climate change issue. Part 2 provides an overview of two distinct cultures existing within the United States that strongly correlate with polarization around climate change. These two cultures have been identified in a number of social science studies over the past few decades as individualist-collectivist, hierarchical-egalitarian, or tight-loose. Part 2 also surveys how our culture of consumerism and self-identity feed into climate change. Part 3 explores how cultural complex theory aligns with social science studies and describes how the archetypal roots of these two cultures are embedded in the evolutionary dyad of competition and cooperation. This part further explores how this archetypal dyad has manifested in Western narratives and has supported conflicting perceptions around problems like climate change. Part 4 concludes the chapter with a discussion of how we can use our depth psychological understanding of these two cultural complexes to facilitate creative dialogue between these cultures and hopefully shift the United States toward more concerted action on climate change.
