Why people don’t care about global warming
The phrase “public apathy” was coined in the 1940s by marketing researchers. The idea is that if the public doesn’t care about what you are trying to market to them, then they are “apathetic”.
This term is wrongly applied to groups of people who are — on the contrary — experiencing complex and wide ranging emotions about what is happening to them, the outcome of which is inaction.
Dr. Renée Lertzman, a psychologist and social scientist who studies the connection between psychology and ecological degradation, heads Project Inside-Out devoted to developing a new way of doing public outreach. Her Ph.D. thesis and book chapter on the Myth of Apathy were based on interviews with residents about local pollution and the resulting ecological devastation in Green Bay, Wisconsin but have wide ranging applications to climate change apathy.
The key result of her research is that so-called apathy is largely a defense mechanism against underlying anxieties and a sense of powerlessness against the inevitable.
It turns out that when faced with environmental catastrophe, whether local or global, people tend to cope with their anxieties by pretending not to care.
People have a lot on their plate. Consider that we have to deal with pandemics, educational issues, crime, politics, and any…
