I’m a climate scientist, and I’m on social media: so nearly every day, often multiple times a day, I have someone telling me that climate change is just a natural cycle (it’s not); or that a warmer planet will be better for us (it won’t); or that we climate scientists are faking the data for personal gain or to further a nefarious agenda of world domination (we’re not: but if we were, honestly we’re doing a terrible job of it).
For that reason, we often think the biggest myths are science-y myths; and because of that, we believe that if we just re-double our efforts to explain the science to people, surely they will change their minds (they won’t).
That’s because the biggest and most dangerous myths that many of us in developed countries have bought into aren’t that the science isn’t real or it’s somehow a matter of opinion. No, it’s the myths that:
- Climate impacts pose a distant, far-off threat: one that only matters to future generations, or people who live far away, on low-lying islands in the South Pacific, or animals that live even further, like polar bears in the Arctic. They don’t affect me.
- Climate solutions pose an imminent, immediate threat: they go against everything I believe and stand for, they will destroy the economy, they will rob me of my freedom, or simply they will make our lives much more miserable and less comfortable. They do affect me, and not in a good way.
Read my full answer here.