Conservation: What are you doing about climate change?
Despite everything we’ve seen and everything we’ve been told we’re still not acting on climate change. Not enough of us are, anyway. So why is it that with extreme weather, devastating drought, rising sea levels and melting ice-caps starring us right in the face we’re still not acting on these climate changes?
Your personality traits are preventing your from acting on climate change
ecoAmerica and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute have done a study recently trying to help us understand why acting on climate change is so hard. The short answer is that we’re just too darn short sighted. As people, we have a collective built in phycology that renders us helpless when it comes to dealing with slow moving, long terms threats. If it ain’t happening tomorrow, we’re not going to think about it today. It’s just one of the many infuriating attributes that we all have. But there are more:
Our Colorado rivers are being threatened by drought and dwindling snow packs. You can make a difference right here, right now by conserving s water.
The psychological distance between our day to day lives and life threatening climate change is just too great. We simply don’t have time. We push it aside as something that will happen to other people in other countries a long long time from now. It’s hard to think to take the threat of climate change seriously when there are problems that need to be solved right now. And we can only worry about so much at a time. For most people, just dealing with the day to day worries and concerns is more than enough. When the news starts yelling at us about climate change, accompanied by doomsday music while showing a photo of a polar bear stranded on a broken off piece of ice, we just can’t deal and we tune it out. Or we are so emotionally numb due to the overload of scary reports about climate changes across the globe that we just don’t have any emotions left to give.
It turns out that we are also incredibly stubborn as people. We’re like grumpy old men; totally set in our ways and our values. Climate change skeptics will remain skeptics and only absorb the information that matches how they already feel. Similarly, we are creatures of habit. We like to keep doing things that we’ve always been doing, because it’s what we know. Yes, we are also curious and inventive, but generally speaking, this report found people would rather continue to use energy that contribute to climate change, rather than make a lifestyle or behavioral change. It is simply just easier to keep the status quo and stick to what you know.
Think globally, act locally…NOW
We need your help to keep our rivers flowing. Every little bit of effort counts.
So, to sum up, if we want to get people to take climate change seriously we need to make the problem immediate, personal and offer simple, easy solutions. Perhaps a good place to start is to think about how you can conserve water. It’s no secret that snow packs are historically low, the Colorado River is now on the endangered rivers list, and California is in the middle of a serious drought. All of this is happening right here, right now. It’s time to act. Every little bit of effort on your part to conserve water counts.
The best white water rafting and kayaking guides in the US
Conserving water is not more critical than ever, the rivers that run through Colorado are the life-force for much of our state’s fish and wildlife, and the rivers sustain our agricultural economy. Dvorak encourages everyone to conserve water and help protect our rivers, wildlife and world-class rafting, kayaking, paddling and fishing. Book the white water river adventure of a lifetime, and feel good knowing that you are doing your part to keep the rivers flowing.