Title: Greenhouse Effect: The Human Response; Anxiety Over Global Warming May Cause Confusion, Denial, Despair

Date: 4/17/1990; Publication: The Washington Post; Author: Susan E. Davis

The scenario: slowly rising temperatures, spreading drought, famine, flooding, increasing rates of disease, sweeping changes in international economies and balances of power, the extinction of major species . . .

Looking into the shimmering blue sky, it's hard to imagine that the apocalypse could come from 100 miles above the earth. But according to the theory of global warming, doomsday may lie just above the clouds where the accumulation of certain gases that prevent the earth's heat from escaping into the atmosphere might well cause average temperatures to rise-the so-called greenhouse effect.

Just how great the risk may be is a subject of political and scientific debate. Yet even as climatologists argue over when or even whether global warming will occur, social scientists have already begun to explore the psychological impact of this uncertain threat.

Studies show that people's reaction to the risk of global warming ranges from confusion and denial to fear and despair. For those convinced that the greenhouse effect is under way, the impact may be acute.

As Sarah Conn, a clinical psychologist and researcher with the Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age at Harvard Medical School, put it: "The place that we all live on is dying. That affects people on a very profound level." Planetary Angst

The fear of apocalypse, of course, is nothing new. The 14th century bubonic plague, as historian Barbara Tuchman chronicled in "A Distant Mirror," also seemed like the end of the world. For centuries, millennial movements foretold a grisly end to civilization. At the time, both plagues and millennia were ascribed to a just-but cranky-God.

The risk of global warming is more like the threat of nuclear war: They are both relatively new risks caused not by nature but by man-made technology, and both would have catastrophic consequences.

Numerous studies in the 1970s and '80s found that people were emotionally disturbed by the threat of nuclear war. Reports of despair, anxiety and nightmares filled professional journals as well as the press.

Now researchers find that Americans are having a similar reaction to the threat of climate change. A 1988 Gallup poll reported that 70 percent of Americans saw environmental degradation as a serious problem.

The Public Agenda Foundation, a nonprofit organization in New York that surveys public attitudes, noted that people have "a real sense that the greenhouse effect could mean the end of civilization and the extinction of the species," said John Nobel, the foundation's research director. "A lot of people think it's starting, even though they don't know what to make of it. They say, `Something's wrong.' They feel uneasy."

Some researchers believe that people also may be suffering on an unconscious level from what French writer Gerard Blanc, co-author of "The World of Appropriate Technology," calls "L'angoise planetaire," or planetary anguish.

"Most of the way we relate to nature isn't conscious," said Mary Schmitt, a neurophysiologist at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Calif. "A living system-whether it's a cell, a body, or a planet-has many levels of intelligence. On some unconscious level, we feel our connectedness to the earth."

Just as one cell reacts to a disturbance in a larger body, Schmidt said, so too do people react to disturbances in the broader environment. This low-level uneasiness signals the conscious mind as "lights on a dashboard," she said.

"As we study different levels of brain activity, we learn that our conscious mind will get a feeling from other parts of us that are not conscious. It may just manifest as a bad feeling, a vague sense that something's wrong. But that signals a much deeper disturbance." Denial and Guilt

The discomfort of either conscious fear or deeper uneasiness produces in some people a state of denial known as "psychic numbing." Psychologist Robert J. Lifton coined the term in the late '60s to describe the psychological defense mechanisms of Hiroshima survivors. Psychologists used the phrase liberally during the past two decades to describe people's inability to face the nuclear threat.

Today, researchers find people responding similarly to the prospect of global environmental demise. "The mind protects itself against this anxiety by ignoring awareness," said Bill Keepin, a mathematician and consultant in Berkeley, Calif. "Psychological denial plays a very important role in people's reactions to global environmental problems."

That denial is partly rooted in guilt. While nuclear war would be caused by a few decision-makers, the greenhouse effect, if it occurs, would be caused by the habits of individuals. Many people don't see the links between daily behavior and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. But the primary gas linked to the greenhouse effect is carbon dioxide and 50 percent of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere annually comes from fossil fuels burned to run cars, homes and industries. In short, the gas is what accounts for the nation's life style.

"It's easy to cast blame in nuclear war," said John Tudge, assistant professor of child development and family relations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "But who starts the greenhouse effect? It's just us."

"Resolving global environmental problems calls for a fundamental shift in our values, our beliefs and our behavior. This can be overwhelming," Walsh said. "Humans don't like to change."

At the same time, other researchers point out that some global problems can lead to grass-roots solutions, which make people feel more effective.

"In talks I give on climate change, I usually find people responding with, `We're all responsible. So what can we do?' " said Peter Gleick, director of the global environment programs at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Berkeley. "There's an inherent skepticism that the government will get it together on this one."

That skepticism is making some people insistent about the need to react, Conn said. "One real potential in this global situation is the fact that things are in such bad shape that we cannot ignore it. People are saying, `I made a mistake. Now I'll own up to it.' "

Keepin agrees. "Sometimes, I feel it's just hopeless, and that the world will end," he said. "Other times, I feel there is so much we can do. I know it's possible to have a world free of fossil fuels. We could do that within a few decades. It's just a matter of getting people to react."Confusion and Fear

The study of the risk of global warming stems from research on how people perceive and respond to threats in their environment. Geographers in natural hazard research have been studying the relationship between environmental threats and human societies for more than 50 years.

Generally speaking, natural hazards are of two types: sudden, dramatic events, like tornados and earthquakes; and long-term, pervasive conditions, like droughts and chronic, persistent fog. With both types, researchers have found, most people believe that if a hazardous event occurs, they won't experience it, and even it they experience it, they won't be harmed.

Similarly, researchers have determined, people believe that if the event happened recently, it won't happen again for a long time, and even it it does happen again, it won't be worse than what happened before. In other words, people are the "prisoners of their own experience" when they try to imagine the possible effects of future natural events, according to geographer Robert Kates of Brown University.

No specific studies on climate change as a natural hazard have been completed, but many researchers point out that one of the difficulties in getting people to focus on the issue is that such massive global change hasn't happened in human memory. People have a hard time imagining it, and when they do, they can't understand how it will affect them.

Indeed this may be why there is so much debate about global warming but very little action. "Climate change hit the public agenda very quickly," said William Reibsame, director of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado. "But I don't think it's having much of an effect yet. It's still a long way from the front lines, below the perceptual threshold."

Another reason people may not respond is because the evidence for the greenhouse effect is complex. "Climate change is tricky," said Baruch Fischhoff, professor of social and decision science at Carnegie-Mellon University. "People have a limited understanding of the scientific processes contributing to it. They may know a fair amount, but the pieces don't fit together."

A recent study by the Public Agenda Foundation found "tremendous confusion" about the causes of global warming among lay people, said research director Nobel. "People may think they know. But once you get beneath the surface, their understanding is very fragmentary, very unclear."

Statistics notwithstanding, everyone is still confused.Telling someone that if carbon dioxide concentrations double in the next 50 years, average temperatures may increase 5 degrees Fahrenheit is not as clear as saying the magnolia trees might die or that a local beach might be submerged. "People just don't know where the numbers come from," Fischhoff said.

Even if people understand greenhouse causes and can envision greenhouse effects, they can't be sure it will occur. Greenhouse experts emphasize the unpredictability of a changing climate. Recent media coverage emphasizes dissent among the experts.

"People always ask, `Is it going to happen, or is it not?' " Fischhoff said. "We just don't know that yet."

Another issue is the scale of global warming. People have been modifying their landscapes since the beginnings of agriculture. Those changes, however, have been mostly local. Similarly, most natural hazards affect specific areas. But climate change affects the entire globe.

The greenhouse effect, then, would be a slow-growing, natural hazard of unprecedented magnitude that people don't understand, can't imagine and aren't sure will happen. That makes it difficult to accept, psychologists say.

"Our brain and nervous system is wired to react to dramatic, rapid threats we can see," said Roger Walsh, professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Irvine, and author of "Staying Alive: The Psychology of Human Survival."

"Global warming is far removed, abstract, and slow-moving," Walsh said. "It is both delayed and invisible. That makes it difficult for people to become aware of the issue."

Copyright 1990 The Washington Post

This document provided by HighBeam Research at http://www.highbeam.com