I’d like to preface this article by saying I am currently an intended Environmental Science major at UC Berkeley, which stereotypically is one of the most hippie, ‘save the planet’, ‘burn the patriarchy’ majors. This may be a biased piece, but this environmental stuff is nonetheless majorly important, and yet in a 2022 survey conducted by Yale on public opinion of climate change within the United States, 14% of people said they didn’t believe in climate change and 34% aren’t worried about global warming.
The root of this divide in climate change is a tragic repeat of history. The 2014 documentary Merchants of Doubt, written by Robert Kenner and Kim Roberts, links global warming skepticism to the tobacco industry. It explains this “playbook” that individuals with power and authority use that essentially sways the public into believing something most definitely bad for them (such as tobacco or global warming) are not so.
Companies essentially gaslight the public by casting seeds of doubt, painting the topic politically as a loss of freedom, impersonating official reliable sources, and getting scientists who are not specialists in the field to speak out and say they vehemently believe the other scientists are wrong.
Freedom is a large issue because it’s what we, Americans, like to pride ourselves on.
Thus, when individuals of power are able to take a scientific issue, such as global warming, and make it a freedom issue about regulations and limitations to one’s personal freedom, many Americans fight back. The emotional response to this argument is strong, but the logic actually doesn’t work. To take a scientific and mathematically rooted issue and say it’s factually incorrect is like saying 2+2 doesn’t equal 4 because it might mess with my ability to write. The science doesn’t change by making it a political issue, and just as 2+2 equals 4, global warming is real.
The issue within the scientific community is that by the nature of science, and its inherent complicatedness, scientists are really unable to accurately speak about science outside their field. It’s like asking a football player to speak on figure skating. They both play a sport but definitely not the same one.
Eventually, this spirals out of control, and when the truth is unsavory it’s nice to believe the lies people tell you. Climate change is a truly daunting issue with no real current solution, so if someone were to suggest that one could ignore the issue, why wouldn’t they?
This leads us to the current day.
Why should you care?
The answer to that, unfortunately, is really not something I can tell you because it’s a conclusion that has to come from you.
I can, however, tell you why I care. I know that selfishly I love the smell of ocean air, rolling down a grassy hill, seeing a monarch butterfly, cold watermelon, and going to the park on a bright sunny day with my friends. At the end of the day, these things are #sponsored by Earth. A happy Earth is a happy me because she and I are irrevocably intertwined. On a more serious note, I’m also alarmed at the impact human interaction has had on the environment from increasingly severe fire seasons, microplastics recently found in people’s lungs, and inequalities in who’s facing the front lines of climate change.
As a college student who doesn’t even know what she’s doing next week, I totally understand how daunting it feels to try and be “sustainable” when words like “wicked problems,” “no return,” or any of the articles that make you feel absolutely awful about one Amazon order you made last week leave you feeling hopeless.
The beauty of such a large issue as climate change is that you can choose to focus on one issue and take it a step at a time. Perhaps this week it’s making sure to turn the lights off when you leave a room, remembering to eat those vegetables you bought a week ago before you waste them, educating yourself on a climate change issue, or advocating for climate change policies. No matter how small the action may seem, it makes a difference.
To learn more, here’s a link to some more ideas and educational resources on global warming.