Olivia Judson, evolutionary biologist, has suggested that our “wired” brains might not have caught up to the 21st century. It is also one way, it seems to me, to understand our reaction (or lack of) to climate change.
We perhaps ought to be more afraid of mosquitoes, but Judson points out that it's “bears” that frighten us, because that's what has scared us for thousands of years. It's immediate.
The charging predator focusing on your throat is quick, while the deadly mosquito carrying malaria is unseen and its effects much slower. It makes little difference that bears or lions, and sharks for that matter, kill very few humans today.
While the scientific evidence for devastating climate change appears almost daily at this point, most of us still consider it too far off, too vague, and too uncertain to pay much attention to its consequences. It does not have us by the throat, at least right now.
I received a letter from one of my senators recently. He said that any sort of carbon restrictions “weigh heavily” on him. It would mean job losses, higher fuel costs, and he was not going to subject his constituents to hardships.
Of course, real or imaginary job losses may be the least of our worries sooner than we think. But in fairness to the good senator, the world community is pretty much blowing smoke at the present when it comes to addressing climate change in a serious way.
Olivia Judson has also reminded us in her popular New York Times blog that we humans are the only animal that commits suicide, an “essentially human behavior.” The World Health Organization states that suicides now outnumber deaths from wars and homicide. We're apparently getting better at it because over the past 45 years worldwide suicide rates have increased 60 percent.
William McDonough, the well known architect and designer once said, “All the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.” So how do we go about rewiring some minds before it's too late?
