Slowly cooking on the back burner

Our daily lives are full of things we move to the back burner, things that do not feel urgent and important. But what if we forget those things slowly cooking back there? What if they are us? To the scientific community, the cooking of Earth is not considered slow and is not happening on the back burner; it is quite rapid and is being studied intensely. While to climate scientists it is a pressing matter, studies show that the urgency and acuteness of climate change have not adequately percolated to politicians, policy makers and the general public for them to take the threats and ramifications seriously.

Why is it that the general public is apathetic to what is keeping many scientists up at night? Dr. Nurit Carmi, head of the Society and Environment Program at Tel-Hai Academic College, asks exactly that. In a recent publication she explores some of the key psychological factors that are at the core of our response, or lack of, to the threat of climate change. It appears that this climate threat apathy might be evolutionarily rooted in us.