Most people are unwilling to change their lifestyle significantly in the face of climate catastrophe. In particular:
- refusal to alter their diet
- refusal to ditch their car
Even the idea of simply stopping livestock subsidies is fiercely fought because people would still consider an absence of intervention to be lifestyle intereference. People are hostile toward the idea of changing their commuting and teleworking habits. In the democratic stronghold in California, even democrats voted out a democrat who tried to impose a fuel tax because they are resistant to giving up their car. Examples are endless.
the dominant excuse→ “carbon footprint is a BP invention”
The high-level abstract principle that underpins resistance to taking individual actions is the idea that because the “carbon footprint” was coined by BP in an effort to shift blame, people think (irrationally) that the wise counter move is to not take individual action. Of course this broken logic gives the oil companies exactly what they want: inaction. This has become the dominant excuse people use for not changing their lifestyle.
psilocybin
The deep psychology surrounding the problem is cognitive rigidity-- unwillingness of people to adjust their lifestyles. So how do you make people more open-minded and increase their psychological flexibility? One mechanism is psilocybin, which has been shown induce neuroplasticity and free people from stubborn thinking. It’s a long article but the relevant bit is this:
(click to expand)
The effects of mindfulness training and psychedelic intervention on psychological flexibility
Mindfulness practices encourage individuals to respond to all kinds of experiences, whether positive or negative, without judgment and with openness which fosters psychological flexibility [90]. This acceptance aligns with psychological flexibility’s core components, enabling individuals to act by their values even in the presence of challenging emotions [79, [91]. Psychedelics, on the other hand, can lead to profound insights into personal values, and in this way enhance psychological flexibility [92].
Both methods encourage individuals to embrace uncertainty and change, a fundamental aspect of psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility involves moving beyond limitations imposed by thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness training teaches individuals to observe their thoughts without attachment, reducing cognitive rigidity. Psychedelics often induce experiences that challenge pre-existing beliefs, allowing individuals to transcend the constraining influence of self-concepts and through this way promote adaptability and open-mindedness [3, 38]. Both offer avenues to increased psychological flexibility by fostering acceptance, values alignment, embracing uncertainty, and challenging ego boundaries. Integrating mindfulness skills and psychedelic insights holds promise for sustained psychological flexibility by facilitating a balanced response to internal and external stimuli, and adaptive responses to life’s challenges [93].
Other studies have shown increased neuroplasticity through meditation. In any case, we could use a less stubborn population.
Not just for climate, but consider the pandemic where conservatives (by definition the champions of stubbornness) refused to make even the slightest lifestyle change and fought every act of remediation. A population with a higher degree of psychological flexibility would be better to react to changes of any kind.
Is stubbornness really the core of climate social problems?
A somewhat analogous case study would be racism in the U.S. Racists were extremely stubborn about giving any social space to black people only 60 years ago. But that has changed considerably since. Racists are still stubborn…and marginalized (though, less marginalized than a decade ago, unfortunately). I think the adoption of non-racist policies and their proliferation made racism less relevant in every day life. Racists could be as racist as much as they wanted, but it just didn’t matter. Black folks worked at the front of the bank as bank tellers rather than janitors.
Similarly, I think industrial policy that favors rapid proliferation of climate friendly…stuff is our best bet. Let coal rollers roll coal. If a bunch of people try for net zero or really try to reduce their carbon footprint, rolling coal just won’t matter. Activity at the scale of a whole population makes individual activity superfluous in this case. Economic incentives matter and prudent people will generally try to save money rather than go broke out of pride.
In contrast, I think psilocybin reinforces the narrative that we’re individually responsible for climate change. It would also be immediately rejected by conservatives as population control. It seems like a good idea if you assume everyone does it. More than likely, that will not be the case. And it’d be unethical to trick them into ingesting it.
I would like to add that refusal to “ditch their car” is ignoring a glaring problem:
Many cities are not walkable, and/or people live too far away from employment to choose cleaner options.
To complicate matters, many employers have begun to renege on their remote work benefits, and some people simply cannot work remotely anymore. This is a problem that starts at the top, not one that can organically emerge from the bottom.
And as you pointed out, not everyone will be on board to take psilocybin. Plus, there’s no guarantee it will work. It’s presuming psilocybin will produce a positive outcome, and people have experienced all kinds of things and come to wild conclusions while under the hallucinogenic effects. It’s not guaranteed to be a positive experience or produce a “climate-friendly” change in mindset. You could just as easily wind up with a large subset of people who “met entities” who showed them that the only way to solve the climate problem is to ensure humans die out.
And the last thing we need right now is more accelerationists making things worse.
I work for a local environmental regulator. Our offices are located in one of the most accessible locations in the city possible for public transportation and walkability. Our higher ups wanted to move to an office that would require everyone to drive (no walking distance housing and very little public transport access). Luckily there would not be enough parking for the employees… They also wanted everyone to return to office full time but received enough pushback so that office staff will only have to go twice.
People in power do not see the big picture because they are distracted by politics or they personally don’t want their daily lives inconvenienced.
That’s not an oversight. Choosing to live and work in places that do not require a car is part of the act of ditching the car. Indeed, ditching the car is not as simple as selling the car in many cases.
In my case ditching the car meant vacating the shitty car-clusterfucked city I was in. I switched to public transport for a few years then realized that’s just a baby step (a city bus with just 5 people is as bad as 5 cars each with 1 person). So from there I migrated to a bicycle.
Indeed it’s not for everyone. And in fact it’s somewhat late. The study shows that those who take psilocybin before they reach the age 35 are for the rest of their lives more open minded. I don’t think you can easily refute that. The leap I’ve made from there by saying open-mindedness is conducive to adapting to a changing world (being flexible about changing one’s own lifestyle) is probably not far-fetched. But certainly it’s not for everyone.
Prediction: meditation will become more popular and the short-cut (psilocybin) will become a more and more liberated option in the future. It will make populations more adaptable to a changing world and future crises. At this point, I can see psilocybin helping people better adapt to a fully played out climate impact 20 years from now.
The other issue with the car that I didn’t mention is that moving to a walkable/cycleable locale is expensive. Cities typically have higher CoL, and changing your lifestyle isn’t something you can afford unless you have the extra income.
It’s certainly going to take a concerted effort from everyone, but unless and until the top meaningfully supports that change, the bottom can’t really be expected to bear such a heavy burden. We should certainly do what we each can, but what we each can do isn’t on the same scale as what the ultra-rich and big corps have the responsibility to do.
They’re not going to amend their ways just because there’s an existential threat, especially one they think they’ll outlive or can buy their way out of.
Yeah, individual “solutions” to climate change all miss the point. We need systemic shifts that individual actions working within capitalism cannot solve. Without radical organized collective responses (think mass protests with “property violence”) and mass government action, we’re all dead.
It’s a false dichotomy to say individual actions are in any way at odds with systemic changes. To the contrary, the needed systemic solutions will result in individual lifestyle changes in the end anyway. It’s just a question of whether you’re willing to act now or whether you intend to wait until collective forces manifest in some ½-assed compromising way. We need people to act now, well before policy slowly twists the arm of those in the climate denial camp.
The amount that any person could change about their own lifestyle to impact climate change will never be enough, even if every billionaire, politician, and corporate executive buys in. Without massive corporate and political buy-in, we’re fucked, and corporate buy-in won’t happen until it’s far too late at best, unless they’re forced to.
By all means, change your lifestyle and encourage others to do the same. It’s great and can potentially be motivating to keep caring about working together to force real change, but spreading the idea that lifestyle changes will result in any significant impact is problematic at best.
Systemic change will also be insufficient and also late. You need both people acting now and the system eventually making some impact - which will be a compromise as the oil states claim they need to sell oil to afford to reach a carbon neutral infra.
To quote someone you agree with:
Yes, but insufficiently so, and as I said much more slowly. Why wait? And why needlessly emit GHG as you wait?
You do understand that you started your post with “The core of the climate social problem” (emphasis mine), right? You wouldn’t be getting nearly as much pushback if you didn’t insinuate that you’re proposing a solution to climate change instead of just sharing something you found interesting that might help change some people’s lifestyle choices.
The emphasis should be on “social”. There are many facets to the problem but the social problem (individuals neglecting to act as they wait on systemic action) is the problem of my focus. The hope that Trump does not get reelected in 1 year and set back global systemic action for 4 years is a bit problematic.
It’s not about blame. This is what the climate deniers try to push: “it’s not humans fault thus we are not responsible for fixing it”. A solution is what matters, not looking for who to blame.
People who are psychologically flexible are the ones who are signing up to stop contributing to the problem and who can become part of the solution faster than systemic change can be deployed.