Developing a social psychology of climate change

摘要

Despite overwhelming consensus among scientists about the reality of anthropogenic climate change (Bray, 2010; Oreskes, 2004), there remains significant reluctance on the part of citizens and politicians to take the action needed to address it. This resistance has been repeatedly identified in social research (Leiserowitz & Maibach, 2010; Leviston, Leitch, Greenhill, Leonard, & Walker, 2011; Lorenzoni & Pidgeon, 2006; McCright & Dunlap, 2011; Reser, Bradley, Glendon, Ellul, & Callaghan, 2012) and is mirrored by the lack of progress made by salient political summits (Rogelj et al., 2010). Perhaps as a response to this, scholarly journals and articles that are focused on climate change are growing. Natural scientists tell us that we know what needs to be done to avert dangerous climate change (IPCC, 2014), and economists tell us that delaying action in the short term will lead to much greater costs in the long term (Stern, 2007). Understanding public responses to climate change and developing solutions to catalyse action is a critical challenge for the social sciences, and we propose that the development and elaboration of a social psychology of climate change would be a cornerstone of such an approach.