I love the story told to me by my friend Michael Braungart, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, the book that helped launch the circular economy movement in the early noughties.

He says, what would happen if you take all the humans on the planet and put them in a big pile and then take all the ants and make a pile next to it. The ant pile would be bigger. But no one says , too many ants are ruining the planet. Quite the opposite, the recycling work they do make them almost the best circular economy practitioners around. So the problem isn’t too many humans but our day to day habits. Imagine when we get so good at looking after our world that extra humans would mean an even better planet

There are quite a few reasons that we are not yet taking the climate emergency seriously.

I have tapped into the thinking of Art Markman, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas writing in the Harvard Business Review. He says ‘If people are motivated to avoid threats to their existence now, why is it so hard to get people to act on climate change’.

There are four main reasons. For most people it is the difference between long term and short term thinking and this is the hardest trade off for people to make.

People don’t save enough money for retirement preferring to spend now, they can over eat in the present and even smoke while actually knowing that long term, this is bad for their health

Ignoring climate change unfortunately has short term benefits. You don’t have to change any habits, business can still make climate unfriendly decisions and make more money now and even the government won’t upset voters now to make hard decisions because of the next election coming up

So what can you do here. Recognising the behaviour is a big part of the solution. We can save for retirement and also give up bad health habits. So we can also change our habits to stop climate change.

Business can be encouraged to do the right thing through your buying behaviour and by asking for the climate friendly products you want. Even politicians do listen to their electors if you take the time to let them know what is important to you.

Secondly, climate is a non linear problem. people are already good at making judgements of linear trends. I spend $5 a day on coffee. Therefore I can understand the implications without setting up a spreadsheet. But but when things start slowly then accelerate this causes a problem. People will still think linearly. A few cigarettes a days ok but it’s the accumulation of years of smoking that does the damage . Then the health issues suddenly sneaks up on them.

Likewise it’s been a long time until any obvious impacts of climate change have appeared. But we can see them now.

The third issue is distance. Most of the problems are happening to others far away. Research shows that people conceptualise things from a distance more abstractly than what’s happening to their own neighbours. So it losses impact and is not seen as important.

And fourthly the future is actually very abstract. We don’t know what will happen. We love to live in the now, and maybe the past but don’t trust what will happen in the future.

And I add a fifth reason. Many, mainly men, think we are so clever, that science will come up with a ‘get out of jail card’ that will sort all these problems. So we don’t have to do anything but wait for these clever scientists to save us. This is quite common thinking , including among media commentators who will rubbish cycle lanes and other green initiatives because of of this thinking.

This is wishful and or even magical thinking. Not rational at all, like these blokes like to think. Should we keep smoking and over eating and wait for science to save us. We actually have all the scientific processes right now to reverse the climate emergency , we just need to change our habits and put them in place.

So what else can we do?

Well just start doing more activities that will make a difference and try and convince your friends and family to join you. Doing these activities actually brings experience from your future activities into the present . It’s not abstract anymore but usual habits.

When talking to a sceptic ask them what the probability is, that human activities are affecting climate. If they say 20%. Ask them, would they forego something today that would have a one in five chance of affecting the health of a grandchild. They will normally say yes. Be specific. 

Your own behaviour is the best way to change the behaviour of your community.