ABSTRACT
I want to begin with a number. As of March 2015, only 4% of Americans hear a friend or relative talk about climate change at least once a week (Leiserowitz 10). Four percent. Imagine yourself in a grocery store with another hundred shoppers. This week,
ninety-six of them won’t hear about this topic from anybody they know. In an average group of twenty-five students, only one talks about it once a week. Only four do so once a month. Why is this? Our brains aren’t wired for this topic: it’s abstract, seemingly distant,
too big. We worry we can’t answer important questions or deal with misinformation. We avoid touchy issues of politics, ideology, religion, and cultural and personal identity. Above all, we find it deeply unsettling. Climate change, therapist Rosemary Randall writes, is “a disturbing subject that
casts a shadow across ordinary life.” Like other social taboos, it can cause conflict and embarrassment; it “can raise fears and anxieties that people feel have no place in polite conversation.” It provokes many defense mechanisms. In the words of another therapist, Renee Lertzman, these include “denial (it’s not going to affect me or my kids; the science is not settled), projection (it’s their fault, not mine), paralysis, apathy and disavowal (I know this is happening, but I am going to continue doing what I do anyway). When we trigger anxieties we almost always inadvertently trigger defenses-and when it comes to climate change these defenses act on everyone from greenie urban liberals to climate science naysayers.” Note Lertzman’s “everyone.” No wonder we don’t like to talk about it. And yet it is certainly our greatest
global problem. We must help break this silence.
