Inconvenience, the biggest enemy for urgent climate action

A recent report by The Guardian highlighted the results of a YouGov survey that sought to ascertain public backing for state-level climate action amongst seven European nations. The results, to say the least, were not particularly encouraging. While large majorities in the nations surveyed expressed concern over climate change and agreed that climate action was more effective when taken up by all the nations together, there was very little will to support any climate action that came with lifestyle sacrifices for individuals.

While low personal cost measures such as planting trees met with broad support, this support entirely fell off when the survey started bringing up increasingly ‘radical’ measures like voluntarily eating less or no meat and having fewer children.

Why fix what you can’t see

When it comes to climate change, half the battle is simply reaching the starting line. Climate change, by its nature, is a complicated problem with a truly vast scale, arguably bigger than any other problem humanity has ever had to confront. And that is part of the issue.

For most people, climate change is too big, too complicated and too slow-moving to be seen as a problem that needs to be addressed on an urgent basis.

Compared to more tangible near-term issues that can be politicised and problematised, the impact of climate change is more often than not presented in abstract terms that make it hard to present as a real issue for people more concerned with the growing cost of their groceries and the educational prospects of their children.

And all this is before one considers the abundance of rhetoric that exists for the purpose of convincing people that climate change is either not a real thing, not something caused by humans, not worth worrying about or simply too big for humans to actually fix in any sense.

In other words, inaction and apathy are natural first reactions to climate change for many people, even if they have witnessed a tangible increase in climate-related disasters themselves.

Individuals aside, this lack of serious interest often serves the purposes of large organisations and governments that can continue to save costs and efforts in many cases by simply ignoring the emissions impact of their activities, all the while making less than straightforward promises to address climate change through questionable measures.

The biggest example of such questionable measures is the idea of simply planting more trees. At face value, the idea itself is not a poor one. Trees absorb carbon dioxide. Not to mention that they are exactly the sort of tangible solution to the climate crisis that would appeal to the average person on account of trees being big and green.

But when it comes to their actual impact in fighting climate change, experts are unequivocal in stating that no amount of trees being planted would be enough to counterbalance the amount of emissions humanity continues to add to the atmosphere every single day. And yet no one will say no to a solution that involves planting more trees because it is not entirely illogical even if it is less than effective.