Climate trust: Why we know about climate change and yet do not act

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As recent surveys in Germany sufficiently confirm, global warming is an issue that is increasingly troubling many sections of the population. The risks of climate change are of high political importance and climate protection meets broad support. At the same time, the willingness of the population to change their everyday behavior is rather limited. One explanation for the apparent contradiction is the widespread climate confidence of the people.

During the tenure of New York City mayor John V. Lindsay (1966-1973), his city was hit by an exceptionally heavy snowfall (Blizzard) in February 1969, which brought life in New York City to a standstill. The residents of course complained loudly to the government of the city and wanted to know urgently, what the city intended to do to alleviate the dangers and hindrances of everyday life by the snow masses. It goes by the legend that Lindsay should have merely answered coolly, "God gave us the snow and he will take it from us again." In addition, the next generation of the population of New York has already forgotten the extreme event of the year 1969 with its everyday demobilizing inconvenience.

The confidence in the continuity of the climate, which is shared by a large part of the population, is already leading today and may lead in the future to massive conflicts of climate impacts and climate protection. Discussion about the introduction of a carbon tax or higher energy prices is just the latest example of this drastic contradiction between social and political recognition of the dangers of climate change and doubts about appropriate mitigation measures.

It could be argued that it is in the case of global warming that insights and virtues, not opinions, should rule. Whether the public is likely to embrace the negative view of their moral and intellectual competence today can be doubted, as well as their willingness to be politically incapacitated, democratically, if democratically.

Why does the population consider climate change to be a serious problem, as recent polls confirm, while their readiness to act is rather subdued? We would like to justify that this contradictory attitude should not necessarily be attributed to dull obstinacy or a stubborn satisfaction with the prevailing living conditions.

Climate appears as a background that can be planned with

The geographer, glaciologist and climate scientist Eduard Brückner (1862-1927) described man-made climate change and its consequences for society more than a century ago. An outstanding feature of his analysis is his presumably still correct observation that the prevailing social climate understanding is based on a firm belief in the stability of the climate.

Brückner points to the dominance of an apparently deep-rooted conviction that the climate consists of a series of conditions that consistently result from the day and year cycles that cause the seasons to differ in all parts of the world. Does Brückner's thesis still apply today?

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Despite the warnings about the changeability and unpredictability of the climate system, which has existed over the centuries by scientists including Brückner, the climate is still generally understood as an ensemble of constant, stable conditions. Climate usually appears as a reliable resource, as a background against which life can be pre-planned and lived as planned.

Of course, this conviction does not exclude the possibility that some degree of disruption is inevitable: unusual dramatic events such as floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and other weather extremes happen; But it is expected, as already by the mayor John Lindsay, that sooner or later the conditions will return to the normal state of the climate after the disturbance and the familiar routines will take effect again. The disturbance of normality is itself normal.

Our way of life is based on the assumption of a constant climate

Climate trust is, psychologically speaking, something of a preference for stability and continuity. Extraordinary events strengthen the affinity to permanence and continuity of life. Heavy rainfall, for example, would be an obvious reminder of the usual weather.

We find that our way of life is based on the assumption of a constant climate that we trust, and at the same time reproduce that consideration. In general, trust has the function of enabling social interaction.

Niklas Luhmann writes about the naturalness with which we trust the world: "This starting point can be established as an indubitable fact as 'nature' of the world or of man [...] Every day one trusts in this self-evidentness" - and "confidence in In that well-founded sense, the daily life is a component of its horizon, the essential feature of the world. " By trusting that the climate will remain constant, society can exclude the unknown future.

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For Luhmann, trust is needed to counter the unpredictability. Trust "risks a determination of the future"; it is an ultimately risky practice. In fact, paradoxically, reliance on constant climatic conditions can serve to disguise the ways in which societies contribute to destabilizing those same conditions. Because the statement of the climate scientists today that the stability of the climate can no longer be taken for granted, is highly worth considering.

While once-day confidence in the climate coincided with its scientific construction as a stable global object, today, when science reveals the likely instability of the climate, there is a contradiction between everyday social assumptions and prevailing scientific opinions. Today, the risks and challenges of climate change have come to the fore, not only in research, but also in much of the analysis in the media and in political discourse.

More about the climate crisis

OverviewAnswers to the ten most important questions about climate change

And although the reality of manmade climate change is often and fiercely disputed, in particular, by the populist political parties, it is hard to get around its general recognition. In the wake of growing scientific concern about global warming, a different image of the climate has gained the upper hand in the media: the picture of climate as a source of disasters. Here, therefore, there is decided climate suspicion .

Our thesis is that perceptions of the climate and climate change are closely linked to our way of life and can not simply be overturned, even if they are never established once and for all. Summoning up a catastrophic future on the one hand and thumping on scientific truths on the other may hardly bring about any movement here. Thus, the observed increase in extreme weather events should only lead to a change in the public's awareness of the normality of the climate.