Our thinking

Wilful Ignorance

8 April, 2022

On Monday, the IPCC published the third and final report from its latest review of the state of the climate. Like previous reports, this latest publication represents the combined efforts of hundreds of scientists drawing from thousands of research papers over the course of several years.  

It’s a shame, then, that the world is ignoring it.  

There’s a lot going on in the news right now. But our willingness not to engage with increasingly dire warnings about the state of the climate is a problem that needs to be solved. If the IPCC reports – offering the most conclusive evidence that we need to act now – can’t grab our attention, then we need something that will.  

Part of the problem might be that as a species we’re just not biologically wired to respond to slow moving threats like climate change. But it is also about how these reports are communicated. Headlines which bill each report as the most damning yet – while entirely accurate – are contributing to a collective climate complacency. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t continue to talk about the exceedingly serious implications of climate change in the most factual manner. But there remains a substantial gap between the significance of the IPCC report’s findings and the attention we pay to them.  

Who can fill this gap? Media outlets, for one, through journalism that focuses on translating these reports into meaningful action for individuals (we particularly like this example from Greenpeace). Businesses, as another, who very much are wired to think about long term threats and who could play a bigger role in engaging their customers in the IPCC’s findings.  

And finally: ourselves. We need to stop scrolling past climate warnings in our newsfeed and instead take the time to properly engage with the messages we’re receiving – scary though they may be. It goes without saying that the alternative is scarier.   

By Louise Podmore