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Climate Action
The Psychology of Climate Paralysis: Why We Know But Don’t Act
Every year, nearly people lose their lives to heat-related causes. 2.4 billion people—70% of the global workforce—are at high risk of extreme heat. I shared these stats with a friend, explaining my rationale behind the recent career transition to climate tech.
My friend nodded, shared his observations of changing weather patterns, and seemed genuinely moved. So when I mentioned an opportunity in climate tech that perfectly matched his skills, I expected enthusiasm. Instead? Nothing. Not even a glance at the job description.
This was the latest example that made me wonder — why is it that we seem to care yet do nothing to initiate change? Climate action requires collective and immediate action, but how do we make that possible when it seems like no one wants to do anything? Not even when we tell them how they can contribute to climate action?
And because I tend to turn to psychology and behavioral science to get answers to difficult questions, I decided to do the same here. This blog is about what I found.
The Human Story Behind Our Inaction
We’re not just facing a climate crisis—we’re facing a crisis of action. Every day, I witness this — in the car left idling at a stoplight, in the convenient but unsustainable choices we make at the supermarket, in mixing recyclable and non-recyclable waste.
Turns out, this paralysis isn’t about apathy—it’s about being human. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we want to experience all those extreme events, it’s just that our minds sometimes work against our best intentions.
Here’s what I’ve learned about why we get stuck:
Cognitive Biases
Who doesn’t like shortcuts? Our brains aren’t an exception to this rule either! are like a mental shortcut our brain takes to make decisions quickly — without always realizing that the decision wasn’t right.
We tend to be influenced by our experiences, emotions, and stereotypes instead of just facts.
You know how sometimes you’re compelled to buy/sell stocks during market volatility, even if you rationally know that the best strategy is to sit and trust in the process of long-term investing? This bias is called action bias — we prefer action over inaction even when we don’t know whether the action is better than inaction. This is just one of the many biases we experience daily.
Framing
The information about climate change is often presented through graphs and maps. And even then, you can only see noticeable changes in the environment during long-term horizons.
More often than not, you’ll see climate change presented through complex graphs and distant timelines. A beautiful example of this is — beautiful website and even more visually appealing maps — but when was the last time you spoke to your friend using maps and charts? Exactly.
Per Espen Stokes and Jørgen Randers talk about it in their book, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming —
If your goal is to enhance public understanding and concern, starting with codes and graphs is like shooting yourself in the foot before you even begin walking.
This climate jargon, the graphs, and the charts are confusing and off-putting (at least Probable Futures isn’t). In fact, the authors argue that this method of presenting facts is “ghostly or diabolical” because it defies “nearly all the evolutionary and cognitive hooks our brains use to generate a sense of urgency.”
On top of it, the way we affect our perception as well. When we say climate change kills nearly 500,000 people yearly, the problem seems too hard to solve already. Such messages evoke fear and helplessness, leading to avoidance.
“We hate losses much more than we enjoy gains” — another very special thing about our brains.
Distance
We read about climate change on the news — landslides in India, floods in Sudan, drought in the Amazon, hurricanes in the US, and typhoons in Taiwan. These extreme events are often presented as a distant threat — something happening elsewhere, to other people, in some fuzzy future. We’re reading about them from behind a screen — it’s as much of a temporal distance as geographic.
When we see research reports mentioning ‘2050’, our brains automatically file them under ‘not my immediate problem’.
They don’t feel a sense of urgency unless they are the ones being affected by it.
Our brains are wired to respond to immediate, tangible threats — such as paying the rent or going to the doctor’s office, while the gradual warming of our planet feels like a story happening to someone else.
Cognitive Dissonance
When I first read about cognitive dissonance, I’d echoed so much with the examples that I realized I am not a bad person! Just a human! What a relief!
Here’s an example to understand Cognitive Dissonance:
Imagine someone who values health but continues to smoke. They might say, “I only smoke occasionally, so it’s not that bad,” to ease the psychological tension between their beliefs and actions. Or they might think they exercise regularly, so it’s balanced (I say that every time I consume another croissant).
Cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable inner tension — psychological discomfort due to holding two conflicting beliefs.
This same pattern plays out in our response to climate change. We want to buy sustainable products, but acting on that intention is hard. There are not many options; plus, there’s a perception that greener products are more expensive and thus unaffordable.
And if you want to try hard, researching for products takes time, social support, and knowledge. And when you find yourself in the thick of research for buying tampons and are still not sure what brand to buy, frustration sets in.
This gap between intention and action creates cognitive dissonance.
To alleviate this psychological tension, we resort to thinking:
And in the worst-case scenario, we question the scientific evidence.
This resolution is also influenced by our social group, as we discuss more in the next section.
Social Dynamics
Social Influence
Remember my friend who didn’t apply for the climate tech role? His response wasn’t just about the job — it was about belonging. We’re not close friends and his close friends aren’t environment conscious.
And fair — our behavior is influenced by what everyone else in our group is doing. If it’s considered ‘hip’ to keep plants around the apartment, I will too. If climate action is seen as a social norm in my group, I’ll become a part of it too.
“Behavioral coordination in this manner aids group cohesion, and in that sense makes an important contribution to social life,” write Coussi-Korbel & Fragaszy in their On the relation between social dynamics and social learning.
When our social circles aren’t taking climate action, stepping out alone feels like crossing an invisible boundary. This is why witnessing others in our circle take action can be so powerful — it creates new social norms that make change feel possible and acceptable.
Lack of Supportive Infrastructure
Even with positive framing and strong social norms, taking action can be challenging without adequate infrastructure.
If I want to cycle to work but there are no cycle lanes in my city with major traffic issues, I can’t.
For climate and nature, better use of insights from behavioral research can translate high concern into visible and pervasive actions. This approach, called nudging, builds on research from psychology and behavioral economics. Small changes in choice architecture may have a large impact on consumer behavior, sometimes even larger than that of price.
More information about climate change—correct framing or not—will do little to create change if there are no convenient and simple ways to get them home, argue Stokes and Randers.
Identity
Perhaps the most complex barrier is how climate action intersects with our sense of self. This plays out in two critical ways:
Cultural Cognition
Our cultural values and worldview shape our interpretation of climate information. For instance, if your friend’s father has a strong free-market ideology, they may be more likely to reject climate science as it challenges their beliefs in limited government intervention.
In fact, say worldview and ideology play an overwhelming role in determining whether or not people reject climate science.
And then, we tend to listen to experts and read information that matches our values, and dismiss the opposing ones (), making it that much harder to reach someone.
Identity-Protective Denial
When climate change information threatens our sense of self—our identity as a good person—it can trigger a defense mechanism.
“If your job is in the fossil fuels industry, or you depend on cheap gas (thanks to a long car commute to work, say), it is psychologically much harder to admit that your lifestyle is disrupting the air than if you work in the re-insurance industry (which daily calculates climate risks) or drive an electric car,” write Stokes and Randers.
No one wants to agree that they know what they are doing is contributing to climate change and doing nothing about it.
Resistance to Change
And here’s the classic — accepting the reality of climate change and its impact means significantly changing our lifestyles and values. And do we like doing that? No.
We avoid change with every fiber of our being — so changing for a climate change event that might not even worsen before 2050? “There’s time and others are already working to fight it, so I don’t have to” — is the general view.
Breaking the Paralysis
So, as Elizabeth Cripps writes in the — from a psychological perspective, climate apathy is less surprising, even explicable. But that doesn’t mean we should be okay with it. The key is to understand these patterns and find a way forward.
So what do we do about this climate paralysis? That’s a discussion for another day and another blog. But if you find yourself engaging in any of these behavioral loops, catch yourself and call yourself out. I simply say, “Oh, dissonance!” — and I pause. This awareness is our first step toward change.
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