Denial seems to be an innate defensive mechanism for human beings- a natural and often automatic response that allows us to cope, temporarily at least. It’s a way of letting us get on with life in the face of unpleasant realities, especially those that, in large part, seem beyond our control.
We also appear to possess many traits that were developed from the two hundred thousand or so years when our species lived as nomads, basically hand to mouth. These were times when we could just move on from the minimal mess we had created without needing to plan much for the future.
Insofar as we did plan ahead, our most important plans probably related to protecting the territory over which we roamed from interlopers-other tribes. Thus our tribal, war like, sectarian, nature, harmlessly sublimated each week in support for our favourite sporting team but also evident in our constant, never ending, preparations for war.
We are undoubtedly ingenious. Our ability for technological innovation has transformed our lives and continues to do so.
So much so that we now live in the age of the Anthropocene- the age when human activity dominates the entire planet, its other species and ecosystems.
But our ingenuity has given us an exaggerated faith in, and addiction to, technology.
We worship it so much that we have come to believe that surely it will never fail to rescue us from any predicament even one like climate change where science itself warns that dangerous change is already locked in and that we are fast approaching irreversible tipping points, after which any action will likely be too little, too late.
These then, are the four primary reasons why, as appears increasingly evident, we are not going to defeat climate change. Denial, insufficient ability to defer current benefits for future ones, tribalism and excessive faith in technological salvation.
We are ingenious, heroic and loveable in so many ways. But in the end as a species it’s now obvious we are going to fall short and bring about our own destruction. It’s in our nature.
We have always suspected this about ourselves. Our main religions predict apocalypse. Though caused by the hand of God, the end times, God’s plan for humanity, is preceded by natural disasters, wars and famine. Yet God too is also our creation and it’s by our own hand that apocalypse, or something close enough to it, will come about.
But it’s also in our nature to not want to admit defeat and to want to struggle on, which of course, we will do. We really have no other choice.
We like to blame our leaders. Or our social systems. And while some live greedier lives than others and some are far too rich and others far too poor, blaming leaders or social systems appears likely to be just another form of denial- a refusal to confront the horrible reality that our problems probably run much deeper and in truth lie within us all.