Climate Psychology

The characteristics of climate change make it an incredibly challenging problem for us to solve. There are two aspects to this challenge:

• The fact that climate change is a wicked problem, and

• The fact that the characteristics of climate change are almost perfectly suited to evading the human brain’s risk perception and management skills.

As noted in the quote above, our “risk brains” have had very little time to evolve since humans relied on basic pattern recognition to manage risks, as in the case of watching out for lions in the Serengeti.

This chapter of Your Climate Change PhD brings you up to speed on the psychological aspects and barriers to climate action. You’ll also have hyperlink access to curated knowledge collections in the Climate Web itself.