Yearly, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) what we refer to as COP, and it is attended by world leaders that have direct or indirect relationship with the United Nations which is almost all countries and they go there to discuss effective ways to combat climate change but in all of this, it looks like majority of people don't believe in climate change or the science of climate itself.
Around the world, libraries are full, journals written, reports submitted, and even interviews granted to how humans are the major cause of climate change but then, a lot of people find it difficult to believe the existence of climate change itself less its effect on the environment, and even those that believe that climate change is a thing aren't doing much or doing less to nothing about it. We all know that climate change and human effects is a fact, but why are we not accepting it, or why is our brain continuously not working to see it improve?
Either we like it or not, we are humans and our brain still has its primitive traits that we inherited from our ancestors and so we look at things of our recent world with our primitive thoughts that our ancestors lived here and there were no problems so why will our lives now be causing a problem. Psychologist John Tooby explained that another reason why humans act this way is because we respond to threat when they have direct impact on us then when it concerns everyone.
We respond to threats that are personal, that would affect our environment immediately such as in the case where there is a teargas being shot, threats that speaks against our morality or are indecent, and the ones that affect us like at the time. If the threat doesn't fall into this purview, then we can as well not concern ourselves with it. This is just how the human brain thinks, and climate change effects aren't things that would affect us in the immediately, so a lot of people aren't taking it serious. There was a time I was discussing with someone about global warming, and he mentioned that he is certain that by the time this entire thing happens, he would have been dead so he doesn't have a problem with it. This is similar to the mindset that corrupt politician have which is why they continue stealing public funds because they believe if the country bankrupts, at least they won't be affected directly.
If it was said that climate change was affecting a particular animal like cow for your beef production, or your favorite dog or cat pets, we would have taken it more serious than we do now. Scientists agree that we are both rational and emotional beings and while the rational aspect of our brains want to do the right thing, the emotional part of us would always bring up excuses since it isn't affecting us directly at the moment, this is according to psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
According to Kahneman, in what he refers to as Optimism bias says that about 38% of people believe it will affect them personally, while 62% believe it will affect the future generation. He says that people decide to use confirmation bias depending on if they are directly affected or indirectly affected. For instance, a person who has experienced hurricane would say it is an effect of climate change because they have a first hand experience of a negative climatic event while people in regions where these natural disasters don't take place will pick that it is just a natural phenomenon bound to happen at some particular places.
Also, it looks like the media is making a whole lot of noise about climate change making it look like it is normal for people to hear it and not pay concern to it since it is not affecting them directly. They keep using words to "yet to come" and some people aren't concern because scientists would come out to say a lot of unknown or uncertainty to the topic. You see, it is not that we do not know about climate change, or we do not understand the risk or problem associated with it, we just decide not to notice since it is not affecting at the moment.
Reference
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329820-200-understand-faulty-thinking-to-tackle-climate-change/
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2015R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/77948
https://www.who.int/health-topics/climate-change#tab=tab_1
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281273968_Evolutionary
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316377870_The_Theoretical
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024471/
https://www.soci.org/blog/2022/3/why-are-we-ignoring-climate-change
