There is a Simple Way to Solve Climate Change. Embracing Reality.

We refuse to do so.

In many parts of our lives, reality is fungible. We live in a world where what is true is not absolute and can be made to be whatever one wants it to be.

That isn’t a bad thing … most of the time.

Most of the things that happen in our lives are interpreted by our subjective experience. You can measure who is faster, taller, who has more cash in their bank account, or who has more social media followers. These are objective things that we can measure. But most things in life don’t work that way.

I can say, “The best movie of all time is the Cohen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing.” That doesn’t make it true for you, or for anyone else. The Cohen Brothers themselves would probably disagree with me on that one. But it does make it my truth. Your best movie truth is probably different. We are both right.

When I was a kid, and in the early lives of most people in positions of power in the world there were very few different options of reality. I grew up in the United States and there were three networks where you could get the news. They were all pretty boring fact-based half-hour programs. People got their news by watching the middle-aged white newsman that they liked the most or found the least disagreeable. People got their news by reading the newspaper too, but they were usually confined to their local newspaper. In some countries, the government would run the media, but wherever you were, reality wasn’t all that fungible. Different cultures and different countries might have different ideas of what happened in a certain event, but it was nothing like what we see today.

For better or for worse, you can now get your information from tens of thousands of sources. Most news or information sources are part of for-profit organizations that see the news business as a potential profit center. This means that the news must make money. When this is the case, the desire to see news as entertainment or to give people news that will titillate or infuriate drives news more than the desire to inform the public.

You can get your news exclusively from sources that look like you, think like you, and talk like you. That is not good for society, because society is not made up of people just like you. but if your media diet only comes from sources that do not challenge your opinions, you can easily feel that society does think like you.

Cognitive Dissonance isn’t helping.

In 1957, psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term “cognitive dissonance” in his book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. He defined cognitive dissonance as:

A state of mental discomfort that arises from holding two different beliefs or values.

To fix this discomfort we feel from holding two opposing viewpoints, our minds usually attempt to minimize the discomfort that we feel.

Where climate change is concerned, we can believe that climate change is a real problem, but still want to engage in activities that make climate change worse. Our minds can try to minimize this discomfort by attempting to minimize the reality or severity of climate change or to rationalize that our small actions don’t or can’t make a difference.

Our minds don’t like to feel uncomfortable, so our minds work hard to get us to avoid addressing climate change because addressing climate change is uncomfortable. We run from pain and towards pleasure. We don’t want to change the way we live our lives to stop climate change, so our minds find ways to tell us that climate change can’t be that bad or can’t be that intractable of a problem or isn’t our problem. This is one reason why many people won’t think to act or don’t want to act on climate change until it comes to their front door – until it becomes too destructive to ignore any longer.

It doesn’t help that there are many realities on offer today to choose from where climate change is anything from a hoax or a lie to a minor inconvenience sometime in the distant future.

Alternate realities are the coin of the realm.

Take a step back and think about the fungibility of reality in many aspects of our lives

Business and Finance

Public companies and their auditors have to report quarterly numbers (as do many private companies) to show their owners, investors, and regulators the true state of their accounts. Anyone who has been a financial professional or an accountant knows that these numbers and management statements behind them can exist in a range of realities. Accounting rules can give financial officers of a company and their auditors wide latitude as to what version of reality is reported.

Politics

Whether your country has one political party, two main political parties, or many political parties, each one is selling a different version of the truth to its supporters and the voting (if there is voting) public.  Over two-thirds of Republicans or those who lean Republican still think that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was illegitimate despite no evidence. They have been told this lie by their leaders and conservative news media. I don’t see how that ends well. Most Republican leaders probably have similar concerns, but they are too scared to tell their base the truth because it would hurt them short term. Once you commit to a false reality there is often no going back.

Your company

No matter the size of your company, one of management's main jobs is to get everyone rowing in the same direction. The bigger the company, the harder that job gets. Chaos is no way to run a company. Each department is going to have its own version of corporate reality, most likely with their division as the most important. The version of the corporate reality that gets communicated internally is likely not quite reality, but one that management has agreed to go with. The reality that the company presents to the outside world will almost certainly be a different version of reality.

Your family and other personal relationships

Every member of your family has a different version of the reality of your family unit. And they are each right because experience is subjective. The same goes for any couple you are a part of. You and your partner may agree on most things, but you won’t both sign up for the same version of reality on everything.

Watch Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon for a great lesson on how perspective can change reality. Rashomon is on the list, but it isn’t better than Miller’s Crossing.

How do you tackle climate change in a world of multiple realities?

In a world where no one feels they must agree on climate change and cognitive dissonance is trying to protect us by minimizing the threat of climate change – what can be done?

It is simple.

We must agree on reality.

Not all of us, but most of us.

This will take real leadership.

And leadership is something we are sorely lacking.

If we had adequate leadership on climate change, we wouldn’t be in the predicament we are in now.

Leadership isn’t complicated.

Leadership is accepting reality, communicating that reality, and leading people through that reality. Leadership is telling people that for the common good, we can’t pretend that objective reality is untrue.

Climate change isn’t a subjective truth. It is an objective one. Climate change is physics and chemistry, and the laws of physics and principles of chemistry aren’t negotiable. They are what they are, and we ignore them at our peril.

Our leaders need to convey to us the sense of urgency that is needed to tackle climate change. Yet, that isn’t happening. A sense of urgency doesn’t mean panic or chaos, but telling people how bad things are and what we need to do to fix the situation.

As long as that doesn’t happen, it is easier to let cognitive dissonance brush away any unsettling thoughts about climate change or the destruction of the natural world.

Telling people that times are bad and that we must commit to difficult changes will not be popular, but it is the leadership that we need.

If we don’t demand such leadership, we will not be led out of this problem. If we settle for the leadership we have, we are settling for our own destruction.

Reality is often fungible. We get to choose the one we want.

But choosing the wrong one does have consequences.