Our memories impact imagining and planning for the future

On 13 August On Line Opinion published an article entitled Your memory may be hiding the inconvenient truth about climate change by Misia Temler a PhD in Psychology specialising in how social and cultural factors affect memory. Her arguments as they relate to climate change are not particularly compelling, but that does not mean the entire premise should be thrown away. She is not the first and won't be the last to imply that her specialty can be critical to solving one of the world's great problems. In a weaker moment I would probably admit that I had done exactly the same thing a few times.

First the downside regarding why failure of memory is probably not a significant reason that the Australian public isn't making the fight against climate change the highest priority.

1. Fighting Climate Change means reducing the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The average Aussie knows that Australia is not a major producer of CO₂. In fact, Australia produces less than 2% of the world total. Even if Australia eliminated all its CO₂ generation, it would not come close to solving the problem. Getting total CO₂ emissions down would require international cooperation and the average Aussie knows that doesn't often happen.

2. Fighting Climate Change also requires sacrifices today that won't have benefits for many years. (This was described in a different context by Dr Temler) Some Australians might be willing to make those sacrifices, but that is not the way governments work, because they have a 3 year election cycle. It is also not the way that most businesses work because management requires short term profits to keep the business competitive.

3. Fighting Climate Change requires effective policies by the government. Recent history has shown that neither the Coalition nor Labor has been able to come up with any effective policies that could stand the test of time. It is hard to expect the average voter to get enthusiastic about a policy that they can't imagine, from political parties that have previously failed to deliver.

These are the main factors and they are sufficient for any rational Australian citizen to hesitate in the fight against Climate Change. In addition, though, there are still others that are reducing the enthusiasm for climate change action worldwide.

4. Not everybody in the world is negatively impacted by Climate Change. Farmers in northern inland latitudes will get a longer growing season. Russia's President Vladimir Putin is almost a cheerleader for global warming. Secondly, the poor are likely to be more negatively impacted than the rich and the poor don't have the pull that the rich do. As the IPCC Assessment Report 2014 says:

Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.

5. Global warming is complicated. That is enough to reduce many peoples enthusiasm for fighting it.

6. Although 97% of scientists agree that global temperatures have increased and will continue to increase due to the actions of man, it is unlikely that 97% of scientists agree on what the long term impacts will be. It is also unlikely that 97% of scientists agree on what the best course of action is. It is probably fair to say, though, that 97% would agree that some action is necessary.

7. When the possibility of mass extinction is included in the reasons to fight global warming people familiar with the causes of extinctions would think that loss of habitat, invasive species and pollution that are at least as likely to contribute to extinctions, as global warming.

Although Dr Temler's analogy with Climate Change was not really appropriate, the overall point she makes about the fundamental adaptive function of our memory is still very important.

In a broader context those of us in the rich world are used to things getting better every year, no matter what. It doesn't really matter if we elect crooks president, get into wars that don't have any objective, have our share of natural disasters or let the Bankers rob everybody and then bail them out after they've stolen our money; things just keep getting better. We have better toys to play with, more TV channels, bigger houses than our parents had and holidays that used to be once in a lifetime events, are now no big deal. We don't have any memory of things getting worse, so we don't expect things ever to get worse. As Dr Temler says:

"This is because our ability to remember the past is linked to our ability to imagine the future."

Perhaps more importantly though; as Dr Temler says:

"Memory affects our ability to plan for long term goals"

This makes us reluctant to make changes, like the changes needed to fight global warming, because we always think, everything will be getting better as long as we just keep doing what we have been doing. Things always get better, there is no sense in making big changes.

In fact, though, things have started to get a bit worse in the last 20 years. The natural environment has taken a gigantic hit. There is far less natural habitat and only half as much wildlife as 40 years ago. Worldwide pollution is worse but in the rich world it's getting slightly better. None of that will be of much concern to most rich world city dwellers, though.

Big city commuters have gradually gotten used to their travel times to work increasing 2% a year every single year. That doesn't sound like much but when you bought your house thinking you had a 45 minute commute and 20 years later you're spending over 2 hours a day commuting, you start to pine for the good old days. (That's the story from all my friends in Los Angeles.) In addition, we now have the privilege of paying $100 a week to use the new toll roads. Using the points Dr Temler has made, it isn't hard to imagine a 3 hour commute and $200/week in the next few years.

In many cities buying a home is much more difficult than it was 25 years ago. It's easy to imagine a future where most people live in apartments rather than on quarter acre blocks with a nice garden. Even now the yards are tiny on all new homes.

Petrol and electricity prices have been climbing recently. That never used to happen. We might imagine a $1000 electricity bill, but if we also imagine living in a small apartment the bill probably won't be that big, even as the price per kilowatt increases.

Wages have been flat while corporate profits climb. That didn't used to happen either.

How long it takes these new memories to push out the old ones is probably another project for Dr Temler.

All these issues have been worsened by population pressures, but we've always had increased population and life has always gotten better, so why worry? Our brains tell us very clearly that population growth goes with things getting better. Proponents of population stabilisation such as Dick Smith and David Attenborough make statements like "you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet," and think that such an obvious statement would be a compelling argument, but as Dr Temler points out, our minds just don't work that way.