Five Psychological Gimmicks to Deal With Global Warming That Almost All Start with D

Analyze THIS!

In a recent book entitled "What We Think About When We Try Not to Think about Global Warming" the psychologist Per Espen Stoknes identified five psychological gimmicks  that people use to avoid taking action to prevent climate change.   The five reasons that Per Stoknes comes up with are straight out of the  the kind of "touchy-feely" psychobabble that provides so much amusement in comedy movies about dysfunctional couples in relationship counseling.  

DISTANCE 

Per Stoknes called his first psychological gimmick "distance" ---inspired by the similarities between global warming and a girlfriend who might be acting "distant."  By this he means that Greenhouse Warming seems to be acting remote --- like its mind is on the Arctic maybe, so people can't emotionally connect with it.   

DOOM vs. REALITY

Per Stoknes believes that framing global warming as an oncoming vision of doom that will result in economic hardships and personal losses, and a problem without a practical solution makes people tune it all out.  Here Per Stoknes seems fundamentally misunderstand the problem.  The scientific predictions of the effects of future global warming are what they are---they can't be changed so they sound better.  

COGNITVE DISSONANCE vs. GUILT

Per Stoknes complains that he suffers from cognitive dissonance, because he continues to drive his car, eat meat, fly on airplanes, and do other things that he knows contribute to climate change.  A less fancy word for the emotion Mr. Stoknes is feeling is guilt---the man feels guilty because he think he is a climate criminal who is personally responsible for melting the Arctic Ice Cap and killing off the Walrus.

DENIAL

Mr. Stoknes believes that many people are "in denial" about climate change.  By "denial" he means people can't emotionally connect with Global Warming, i.e. more or less the same thing as he meant when he said "distance."  As far as I can tell he added a gimmick called "denial" so he'd have five big psychological gimmicks instead of merely four.

iDENTITY

Prof. Stoknes' fifth gimmick is what he calls "iDentity" [sic].   Note that the preceding four gimmicks all started with the letter "D" so Prof. Stoknes has intentionally misspelled the word identity as iDentity so as to have all five psychological gimmicks start with the letter "D".  Wow---that is really profound ---  all five psychological gimmicks start with "D"!!!! if you only misspell one of them!!!!!     

By iDentity Prof. Stoknes means that people who are "conservative" don't believe in global warming because people who are "liberal" do.  

------------------------

 Of course the premise of Per Stoknes' book is absurd, as its already too late to prevent climate change----the real question is what can we do to stop Global Warming.  I await his next book...."What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Geoengineering"