One Red Hot Country Mama!

I like this public service announcement from WWF showing people going about their daily routines while the environment is in crisis… yet they don’t skip a beat. The tagline is "Ignoring Global Warming Won’t Make it Go Away".

Many of us engage in this feel-good positivism, and when someone brings up the environment, it is met with avoidance and denial. And, I know there are still some doubters about Global Warming based on people making claims without the full weight of science behind them. But, based as said before, the science is now there:

In 2001, it said that it was "likely" that human activities lay behind the trends observed at various parts of the planet; "likely" in IPCC terminology means between 66% and 90% probability.

Now, the panel concluded that it was at least 90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet’s surface.

How can we still be going about our daily routines in light of this fact? In psychology, denial is known as a defense mechanism. When something is too painful face directly, we tend to pretend it isn’t there. There are many different types of denial, including denial of fact, denial of responsibility and even denial of denial (you can see more here on Wikipaedia). I think the most relevant form of denial is "denial of impact" when it comes to global warming.

Denial of impact: Denial of impact involves a person avoiding thinking about or understanding the harms their behavior have caused to themselves or others. By doing this, that person is able to avoid feeling a sense of guilt and it can prevent that person from developing remorse or empathy for others. Denial of impact reduces or eliminates a sense of pain or harm from poor decisions.

And… I think it’s too bad. I am definitely "for" feeling good, since I believe that life is supposed to be pleasurable. But, there is are lots of differences between being positive and being in denial, even though they can appear similar at first glance (my tool doesn’t let me make tables, so I will just color these to add contrast):

• Being positive is grounded in reality, denial is not
• Being positive is a healthy coping mechanism, denial is not healthy
• Being positive is genuine and from the heart, denial is image-driven
• Being positive is facing reality, denial is avoiding reality
• Being positive gives you an opportunity to make change, denial does not

So, I think a positive, non-denial-oriented attitude would be "hey, we have a problem, let’s act differently and try to turn it around". Instead, people are going about their normal routines. They are saying "Shhhh… don’t point stuff out… we’re trying to pretend it’s fine when it’s not fine". Then they don’t sense the pain from the poor decisions. Then they don’t change.