Kari Marie Norgaard

This is a book about everything.

Technically, yes, it's a book about how people deny climate change; but the theoretical lenses in it are useful for just about any issue you might choose. There were mind fireworks going off all over the place for me--seeing how, on one point, what the author discusses perfectly describes and explains something I have seen over and over again on climate change actions, and how at the same time it applies to other social movements from feminism to LGBT and class issues, as well as personal- and family-level issues like addictions and mental health.

Normally, I read books on climate change very, very carefully.

I allocate daily page quotas, don't allow myself to read them too close to bed (or I won't sleep), maybe manage the emotional fallout with a glass of wine and/or half a box of kleenex. Not this one. This one, I want to bronze, except then I couldn't reread it.

While Norgaard does touch on the issue of organized climate denial a la the Koch brothers and Exxon, it is mostly about the small-scale, community and individual denials we undertake to manage our emotional responses.

After all, she asks--even in the United States, a majority of people say they believe the climate is changing and that this is a serious issue. And yet even these people are not acting. Why?

The disconnect, Norgaard argues, is that people feel so scared, guilty and helpless, that they turn to emotion-management strategies instead of political or social action. These are described in some detail--in some cases, repetitive detail. But it is convincing and certainly fits my own professional and volunteer experiences.

Much of denial, she argues, is socially mediated and organized: we have created societies where talking about climate change (along with a host of other issues) is considered rude in many contexts, unless it's in the form of a joke. Coincidentally, the Fort McMurray wildfire took place right when I read the book, and I saw this play out in my own country in real time: here we have the Canadian municipal symbol of climate change, burning in a wildfire that is a perfect example of climate change impacts ... and no one mentioned climate change. The one politician who finally did (Elizabeth May) was promptly excoriated by the Prime Minister and the NDP leader, and had to backtrack.

It also serves to reinforce and protect global privilege. The wealthy residents of first world nations, through denial, can reinforce and protect their (our) destructive lifestyles while reassuring themselves that they are good people with good intentions who don't mean to kill people. Which is pretty much identical to every other form of privilege and the types of denial that protect them.

Incidentally, I found it fascinating (and simultaneously crushing) how identical the processes of denial Norgaard identifies and describes are to the very techniques psychologists recommend to deal with mental health disorders: i.e., using thought to manage feelings. With alcoholism, people and families unhealthily decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore to act as if it is not destroying their lives; with climate change (and sexism, racism, classism, etc.) people and societies decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore to manage collective feelings of guilt, anger, helplessness, and fear of loss; with depression and anxiety, individuals are actively taught by mental health professionals to decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore in order to facilitate daily functioning. That is depressing as shit. And not a coincidence, I am sure.

Norgaard offers no hope, which is consistent with her research--only a vague idea that if we start working on climate change locally, people may make these connections and feel empowered enough that they can deal with the guilt, powerlessness and fear through more constructive means. This is a possibility, and one I think every environmental and climate campaigner/activist hopes is true, but has so far proven not to be. Personally, I wonder how we could make the public expression of guilt, fear and powerlessness socially acceptable enough to have the conversations and experiences that we are so terrified of having, and see what comes of that.

If denial on this scale is basically a culture-wide reproduction of the same kind of process that allows, for example, a wife in Austria to remain ignorant of her husband keeping their daughter locked in a secret room in the basement so he can rape her for 18 years, or a husband to not notice his wife's abuse of their children and inability to control her spending, then one might consider using similar techniques as work in those contexts.

1) You can't convince everyone. Eventually they might be confronted with evidence so overwhelming that they can no longer continue denying reality. (Say, if your husband is arrested and charged with incest and the children who randomly showed up on your doorstep are genetically proven to be the offspring of your husband and daughter.) And eventually, maybe not. So instead of trying to convince everyone of the reality of climate change (which, as Norgaard takes some pains to describe, actually backfires because increasing levels of awareness and scientific knowledge on this issue are inversely correlated with levels of concern and willingness to act), allow people who are determined not to know better, not to know better--unless you need them.

2) You can convince some people. There is no way to do this painlessly. Break down the fucking denial with a god-damned hatchet. It is not going to be comfortable. There will be grief, rage, depression, mourning, and terror; these are unpleasant experiences, but not fatal. Stop trying to protect people from feeling terrible about a terrible situation.

3) Regroup, and talk to the people who are willing to listen and talk back about what can be done.

What Norgaard proposes is the climate equivalent of the family of an alcoholic trying to deal with the alcoholism by discussing the financial issues with a debt-management specialist, and hoping that eventually this translates into a willingness to confront the drinking. I've never seen this work. What happens, in my experience, is that denial works for years or decades and everything ticks along swimmingly with disaster under the surface, until someone goes under all at once and almost drowns in it, and then learns to swim, and then recovers. "Feeling terrible" is inevitable and, in some cases, never goes away.

So my personal takeaway is this:

Be as socially inappropriate about climate change as you can handle.

Feel like shit about it. Be as angry, guilty, scared, and powerless as you really are, when you let yourself think about it. Don't cover it up when you talk to people. Don't make it a joke. Bring it up when you know you're not supposed to. Make people uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable. When you find people who are willing to go there with you, talk to them more, get together, make plans.… (meer)