Do we not care about climate change because it’s seen as a distant problem?

By Pol Allingham via SWNS

The majority of people feel climate change is “close” to them, according to a new study.

NGOs and government agencies often operate under the assumption that people see climate change as a problem affecting distant regions far in the future - an effect known as “psychological distance” - and are unmotivated to act as a result.

However, researchers at the University of Groningen, (UG) in the Netherlands, found this was false and argued this misunderstanding could be impeding the climate mission.

The team suggests the bleak misapprehension could be making climate actors feel their efforts are futile if the psychologically-distant group is not getting involved, and put in less effort as a result.

Lead author Dr. Anne van Valkengoed said: “There is no consistent evidence that perceiving climate change as psychologically distant hinders climate action, with studies reporting mixed results.

“We, therefore, recommend researchers, communicators, and policymakers instead focus on how to leverage the finding that many people already perceive climate change as occurring here and now.”

The study published in the journal One Earth, surveyed opinion polls on the global environment. Some included cohorts of 100,000 people, spanning 121 countries.

From the polls, 50 percent of participants believe climate change is happening now, or the near future, and that it will impact their hometowns.

The experts then examined 26 studies on the relationship between psychological distance and climate action.

Only nine found a positive link between the two - some even showed people were spurred to act on climate change when they thought it only affected distant nations.

A total of 25 out of the 30 studies failed to prove that decreasing psychological distance in experiments increased the will to act.