{"id":11705,"date":"2015-09-01T07:36:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11705"},"modified":"2015-09-01T07:36:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T12:36:00","slug":"will-this-be-remembered-as-the-summer-north-americans-woke-up-to-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11705","title":{"rendered":"Will This Be Remembered as The Summer North Americans Woke Up to Climate Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Will This Be Remembered as The Summer North Americans Woke Up to Climate Change?<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"Lizard<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Smokey haze, intense heat, encampments of evacuated residents next to the highway: these were the conditions that greeted\u00a0Renee Lertzman<\/a>\u00a0when she recently drove through Oregon. It\u2019s no wonder why the environmental psychology researcher and professor resorts to the term \u201capocalyptic\u201d to describe the\u00a0scene.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>It was a surreal experience,\u201d says Lertzman, who teaches at the University of San Francisco and Victoria\u2019s Royal Roads University. \u201cWe\u2019re all driving along and it\u2019s so smoky and it\u2019s terrifying. Yet we\u2019re all doing our summer vacation thing. I couldn\u2019t help but wonder: what is going on, how are people feeling and talking about\u00a0this?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really the question of the hour. Catastrophic\u00a0wildfires<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0droughts<\/a>\u00a0have engulfed much of the continent, with thousands displaced from their homes;\u00a0air quality alerts<\/a>\u00a0confine many of the lucky remainder behind locked doors (with\u00a0exercise minimized and fresh-air intakes closed<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Firefighters have been summoned from\u00a0around the world<\/a>\u00a0to battle the\u00a0unprecedented fires<\/a>, which are undoubtedly exacerbated by\u00a0climate change<\/a>. Yet the seemingly reasonable assumption that witnessing such horrific natural disasters may increase support for action on climate change is vastly overestimated, Lertzman tells DeSmog\u00a0Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I think it\u2019s a fantasy that the worse things get and the more intense the effects are \u2026 that will magically translate into a public and political recognition and engagement and getting on board,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s an abundance of evidence that\u2019s not the case and that humans have enormous capacity to avoid and deny reality and what\u2019s staring us right in the\u00a0face.\u201d<\/p>\n

34 \u2018Dragons of Inaction\u2019 Impede Climate\u00a0Action<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Humans\u2019 tendency toward denial and avoidance is incredibly complex and\u00a0entrenched.<\/p>\n

Robert Gifford<\/a>, professor of psychology and environmental studies at University of Victoria, has charted 34 (previously 29) \u2018dragons of inaction<\/a>,\u2019 which prevent people from responding to evidence of climate change, ranging from a naive belief in \u201ctechnosalvation,\u201d to lack of attachment to geographic place, to straight-up\u00a0denial.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will This Be Remembered as The Summer North Americans Woke Up to Climate Change? Smokey haze, intense heat, encampments of evacuated residents next to the highway: these were the conditions that greeted\u00a0Renee Lertzman\u00a0when she recently drove through Oregon. It\u2019s no wonder why the environmental psychology researcher and professor resorts to the term \u201capocalyptic\u201d to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,7214,220,288,8607],"class_list":["post-11705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-desmog-canada","tag-drought","tag-extreme-weather","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11706,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11705\/revisions\/11706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}