Why don’t we do more to stop global warming? As an environmental news writer and as someone who tries to make small changes everyday to live a more sustainable lifestyle, it’s a question I often ask myself. By now, most of us agree that global warming IS in fact happening, that climate change is responsible for a slew of emerging global issues like weird weather patters, rising water levels, mass migration, loss of eco-habitats, food shortages, droughts and desertification (if you’re still a non-believer, read this, then watch this). If we know that global warming is threatening life on the planet as we know it, why aren’t we doing more about it?

I was presented this question in a class last night by our guest speaker Mark Weiss, Founder and CEO of Global Urban Development and the Climate Prosperity Project, and it was interesting to hear what some of my fellow classmates had to say about the subject:

“We can’t really see it happening, so we don’t feel like we need to do anything about it right now.”

“Governments need to institute policies to force people to reduce emissions. They won’t do it on their own.”

“People seek immediate gratification. If they can choose between driving to work in the comfort of their own car or taking a crowded bus, they’re going to take the car because it’s more comfortable in that moment. They’re not thinking about the long term effects of climate change.”

“Corporations are creating a lot of the pollution that causes global warming, but if it’s not cost effective for them to adopt changes that will reduce emissions, they won’t do it.”

My own observation which I shared with the class is that we’re trapped in a system that promotes overuse and overabundance. Prosperity has come to be equated with waste. Your shoe sole has a hole in it, but your neighborhood shoe repairer has gone the way of the dinosaur - so you just buy a new pair. Our communities are built 45 miles away from where we need to show up to work and there’s no available public transportation. Everything at the grocery store is wrapped in 10 pounds of plastic packaging. The social and infrastructural contexts in which we live aren’t set up to be sustainable, and it takes a lot of effort and inconvenience for the average person to alter their lifestyle.

Dr. Weiss agreed with many aspects of our points, and added his own existential take on the subject. His theory is that our fight or flight survival response only kicks in when there is immediate danger. If the sky were clouded over with thick plumes of poisonous polluted smoke and we couldn’t breathe, we’d for sure be addressing the global warming issue. But if the threat is not immediate, it’s not something that humans will naturally seek to address with the kind of immediacy that we need in order to stop the irreversible damage that’s being done to the earth.

He also said it’s natural for humans who are threatened by something to make temporary changes to stop the immediate threat. Out of habit, they tend to return to their previous lifestyle once the threat has dissipated. But in terms of global warming, that’s not sustainable either. We can’t reduce our water consumption for a week, feel good about it, and then go back to taking two-hour showers. The changes we need to make to mitigate climate change devastation have to be permanent lifestyle changes.

So what do you think? Why don’t people make the changes that they need to make to stop global warming, and what can be done to inspire them? Leave your comments below.

takepart and find out more about Global Urban Development and the Climate Prosperity Project.

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