Climate Change and Why We Are ‘Procrastination Nation’

It’s a fact that we are psychologically hard-wired as humans to see our future selves as strangers. So when looking at future climate change and runaway global warming impact events we do nothing. Why? We Are “Procrastination Nation.’’

I recently tweeted this and I will tweet again for rest of my life. “Why do we humans procrastinate? It’s because we think, psychologically, of our future selves as ‘’strangers’’. So in taking steps to fight runaway #AGW, we therefore procrastinate because we don’t see the future as *our* future. We are “Procrastination Nation.” #CliFi”

It’s true. We are never going to fix climate change and we are never going to stop global warming, and that’s because we are going to procrastinate forever and ever until the cows come home to roost. No, that’s not right: until the chickens come home to roost. And by then it will be way too late.

Scholars and climate visionaries like Roy Scranton and Naomi Klein and Jeff VanderMeer and Margaret Atwood and Andrew Revkin and Tim Morton and Katharine Hayhoe and Bill McKibben are doing their best to keep climate change issues in the public eye and the public conversation, through opeds and tweets and essays. Not everyone agrees with everything they say, and that’s what it’s like to live in Procrastination Nation. We are just going to keep on procrastinating in regard to climate change issues, and nothing is going to be done to stop future, unspeakable, global warming impact events. You know that, and I know that, and that’s because we live in Procrastination Nation.

Psychologically, we are hardwired to only care about our generation and the next two generations that we can see, our children and our grandchildren. Beyond that, we mostly do not care about the future of future generations.

But I care and I think a lot of other people in Procrastination Nation do care, too. I know that scholars and climate visionaries like Roy Scranton and Naomi Klein and Jeff VanderMeer and Margaret Atwood and Andrew Revkin and Tim Morton and Katharine Hayhoe and Bill McKibben do care. I know that they, and others, are never going to stop fighting the good fight against runaway global warming.

But in the end, let’s face it: we are doomed, doomed. Not now, and not us. Not our children and not our grandchildren. Things will be fine for them. And even our great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great-grandchildren will be fine. The really terrible and unspeakable things, like massive die offs of 25 billion human beings in 500 years from now, say 30 generations from now, will happen later. So much later that we don’t care now. We have no empathy for future generations 30 generations from now because we are, most of us, stuck in the present.

Our future selves? We cannot see them and if we can catch of glimpse of them as some of us can, we only can see them as “strangers.” So we will be Procrastination Nation for a very long time to come, 500 more years at least, perhaps 1,000 years.

One day it will be too late to care. So what did we do in 2018 to show that we care about the future? Nothing. We did nothing but argue, scream bloody murder on Twitter, attack complete strangers online with self-describing narratives, and where did it get us?

Deeper and deeper into the the angst and agony of the Alice in Wonderland patina of Procrastination Nation. I am just as guilty as you are. We are doomed, our descendants, 30 generations now, because of the nation we live in now, here in 2018 and next year in 2019 and so on for the rest of this century, in this terribly late-for-dinner Procrastination Nation.

Dan Bloom (1949–2032)

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Tufts, Class of '71, www.cli-fi.net