In her book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life the Norwegian-American sociologist, Kari Marie Norgaard writes of the three forms of denial identified by the British sociologist Stanley Cohen: literal denial (It’s not true); interpretative denial (It’s true but not as you describe it, or I wouldn’t put it that way); and implicatory denial (It’s true but I can’t accept its implications – for me).
Implicatory denial is the subject of Norgaard’s book: what we do – or not do – with the knowledge that we have: that climate change is real and its consequences are accelerating; that millions are suffering, and dying, because of it; that it is driving migration on a global scale; that extreme weather events are affecting every part of the world, leading to floods, droughts and wildfires … all this and more, while the majority of us in the rich world still live relatively untouched by it, though being in very large part the cause of it?
In order to live hour to hour, to a degree we have to deny, or at least block it out. We have work to do, shopping to fetch, children to feed and educate, the elderly to care for, and we have to find time for recreation. In short we have our lives to get on with, our days to get through.
But surely what is happening to our planet is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore – to deny – because of both the scale and reach of its consequences. When sea level rises it rises everywhere. When heatwaves happen they can happen anywhere, even in the Arctic and Antarctic. Wildfires can burn wherever there is vegetative fuel – in forests, peatlands and grasslands the world over. And while hurricanes pound the tropics and subtropics, violent storms spare none, not even desert locations.
Do we wait until one of these extreme events hits us personally to wake up and ‘un-deny’? Or can we respond to what we know of the bigger picture now: in other words, can we think globally while living our lives locally? If you have been struggling with this, you are not alone.
Norgaard’s answer lies in reflection and three levels of action: personal (What will I do/not do?), political (What demands will I make of my representatives?) and communal (With whom will I collaborate?). To use a well-worn phrase, we really must ‘THINK GLOBALLY and ACT LOCALLY’. To do otherwise is to live in a state of permanent contradiction: knowing full well, yet denying that knowing, and effortlessly but recklessly surrendering oneself, one’s family and community – all of us – to the predicted climatic extremes of the future. And that, ultimately, is moral abdication.
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Joe Human
Sustainable Keswick
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