Malcolm Rands: Why we ignore climate change

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