People will go out of their way to avoid threats to their existence, but not climate change, which, let’s face it, is starting to threaten a lot of people.
Change involves a combination of factors that make it hard for people to get motivated:
- First, acting on climate change represents a trade-off between short-term and long-term benefits. Ignoring climate change in the short term has benefits both to individuals and to organizations.
- Second, climate change is a nonlinear problem.
- Third, many effects of climate change are distant from most people.
- Fourth, the future is always more uncertain than the present.
It’s probably this and more for many people, but we’re running out of time to make necessary changes.