Human Nature Reason Everyone Isn’t Fighting Climate Change

I’ll make a prediction, which is a hallmark of science: I do not think that anything substantial will happen to combat the effects of climate change for the next 10 to 20 years, because that is how long it will take for the public to care.

As a scientist, I find extreme political rhetoric on both sides tough to watch.

The right spreads falsehoods that abandoning fossil fuels will destroy the economy, or worse, that climate change is fake science. The left, meanwhile, incorrectly says we have 12 years to save the Earth.

In reality, the world won’t end and neither will the global economy. There will be severe damage, and it will cost us money to fix, but collective action to prevent it won’t happen because the underlying issue behind public inaction is not political, scientific or economic — rather, it is one of human nature.