Psychology of climate change denial

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_climate_change_denial 

The psychology of climate change denial is the study of why people deny climate change, despite the scientific consensus on climate change. A study assessed public perception and action on climate change on grounds of belief systems, and identified seven psychological barriers affecting behavior that otherwise would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship: cognition, ideological worldviews, comparisons to key people, costs and momentum, disbelief in experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and inadequate behavioral changes. Other factors include distance in time, space, and influence.

Reactions to climate change may include anxiety, depression, despair, dissonance, uncertainty, insecurity, and distress, with one psychologist suggesting that "despair about our changing climate may get in the way of fixing it." The American Psychological Association has urged psychologists and other social scientists to work on psychological barriers to taking action on climate change. The immediacy of a growing number of extreme weather events are thought to motivate people to deal with climate change.

Types of denial

Expanding the meaning of "denial"

Further information: Climate change denial § Taxonomy of climate change denial

The idea of "soft" or implicit climate change denial became prominent in the mid-2010s, but variations of the same concept originated earlier. An article published by National Center for Science Education referred to "implicit" denial:

Climate change denial is most conspicuous when it is explicit, as it is in controversies over climate education. The idea of implicit (or "implicatory") denial, however, is increasingly discussed among those who study the controversies over climate change. Implicit denial occurs when people who accept the scientific community's consensus on the answers to the central questions of climate change on the intellectual level fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Such people are in denial, so to speak, about climate change.

In May 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben penned an op-ed criticizing Barack Obama's policies of approving petroleum exploration in the Arctic, expanding coal mining, and remaining indecisive on the Keystone XL pipeline. McKibben wrote:

This is not climate denial of the Republican sort, where people simply pretend the science isn't real. This is climate denial of the status quo sort, where people accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children. They just deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground.

McKibben's use of the word "denial" was an early expansion of the term's meaning in environmental discourse to include "denial of the significance or logical consequences of a fact or problem; in this case, what advocates see as the necessary policies that flow from the dangers of global warming."

Analysis of soft climate change denial

Michael Hoexter, a scholar and sustainability advocate, analyzed the phenomenon of "soft climate change denial" in a September 2016 article for the blog New Economic Perspectives and expanded on the idea in a follow-up article published the next month. Despite the term's earlier, informal usage, Hoexter has been credited with formally defining the concept. In Hoexter's terms, "soft" climate denial "means that one acknowledges in some parts of one's life that climate change is real, disastrous and happening now but in most other parts of one's life, one ignores that anthropogenic global warming is, in fact, a real existential emergency and catastrophic." According to Hoexter, "soft climate denial and the thin gruel of climate action policies that accompany it may be functioning as a 'face-saving' device to mask fundamental inertia or a deep manifest preference for inaction while continuing fossil-fueled business as usual."

He also applied the term to "more 'radical' groups" that pushed for more responsive measures, but "often either miss the mark in terms of the climate challenge facing us or wrap themselves in communication strategies and 'memes' that limit their potential influence on politics and policy." In Hoexter's view, soft denial can only be escaped through collective action, not individual action or realization.

Soft climate change denial (also called implicit or implicatory climate change denial) is a state of mind acknowledging the existence of global warming in the abstract while remaining, to some extent, in partial psychological or intellectual denialism about its reality or impact. It is contrasted with conventional "hard" climate change denial, which refers to explicit disavowal of the consensus on global warming's existence, causes, or effects (including its effects on human society).

Psychological reasons for denial

Various psychological factors can impact the effectiveness of communication about climate change, driving potential climate change denial. Psychological barriers, such as emotions, opinions and morals refer to the internal beliefs that a person has which stop them from completing a certain action. Psychologist Robert Gifford wrote in 2011 "we are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, also known as dragons of inaction: limited cognition about the problem, ideological worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with other key people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discordance toward experts and authorities, perceived risk of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change".

A study published in PLOS One in 2024 found that even a single repetition of a claim was sufficient to increase the perceived truth of both climate science-aligned claims and climate change skeptic/denial claims—"highlighting the insidious effect of repetition". This effect was found even among climate science endorsers.

Distance in time, space, and influence

Climate change is often portrayed as occurring in the future, whether that be the near or distant future. Many estimations portray climate change effects as occurring by 2050 or 2100, which both seem much more distant in time than they really are, which can create a barrier to acceptance. There is also a barrier created by the distance portrayed in climate change discussions. Effects caused by climate change across the planet do not seem concrete to people living thousands of miles away, especially if they are not experiencing any effects. Climate change is also a complex, abstract concept to many, which can create barriers to understanding. Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, and it causes changes in overall average global temperatures, both of which are difficult, if not impossible, for one single person to discern. Due to these distances in time, space, and influence, climate change becomes a far-away, abstract issue that does not demand immediate attention.

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication said that one "almost couldn't design a worse fit for our underlying psychology or our institutions of decision-making" than dealing with climate change—owing primarily to the short-term focus of humans and their institutions.

Cognitive dissonance

See also: Cognitive dissonance

Sign at Climate March (2017)

Because there is little solid action that people can take on a daily basis to combat climate change, then some believe climate change must not be as pressing an issue as it is made out to be. An example of this phenomenon is that most people know smoking cigarettes is not healthy, yet people continue to smoke cigarettes, and so an inner discomfort is elicited by the contradiction in ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. A similar cognitive dissonance is created when people know that things like driving, flying, and eating meat are causing climate change, but the infrastructure is not in place to change those behaviors effectively.

In order to address this dissonance, climate change is rejected or downplayed. This dissonance also fuels denial, wherein people cannot find a solution to an anxiety-inducing problem, and so the problem is denied outright. Creating stories that climate change is actually caused by something out of humans’ control, such as sunspots or natural weather patterns, or suggesting that we must wait until we are certain of all of the facts about climate change before any action be taken, are manifestations of this fear and consequent denial of climate change.

"It seems as if people stop paying attention to global climate change when they realize that there are no easy solutions for it. Many people instead judge as serious only those problems for which they think action can be found."

Individuals are alarmed about the dangerous potential futures resulting from a high-energy world in which climate change was occurring, but simultaneously create denial mechanisms to overcome the dissonance of knowing these futures, yet not wanting to change their convenient lifestyles. These denial mechanisms include things like overestimating the costs of changing their lifestyles, blaming others, including government, rather than their own inaction, and emphasizing the doubt that individual action could make a difference within a problem so large.

Cognitive barriers

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe displayed a snowball—in winter—as evidence the globe was not warming—in a year that was found to be Earth's warmest on record. The director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies distinguished local weather in a single location in a single week from long-term global climate change.

Cognitive barriers to climate change acceptance include:

• Limited cognition of the human brain, caused by things like the fact that the human brain has not evolved much in thousands of years, and so has not transitioned to caring about the future rather than immediate danger,
• ignorance, the idea that environments are composed of more elements than humans can monitor, so we only attend to things causing immediate difficulty, which climate change does not seem to do
• uncertainty, undervaluing of distant or future risk, optimism bias,
• the belief that an individual can do nothing against climate change are all cognitive barriers to climate change acceptance.

Conspiratorial beliefs

See also: Climate change denial § Conspiracy theories

Climate change denial is commonly rooted in a phenomenon commonly known as conspiracy theory, in which people misattribute events to a secret plot or plan by a powerful group of individuals. The development of conspiracy theories is further prompted by the proportionality bias that results from climate change — an event of mass scale and a great deal of significance — being frequently presented as a result of daily small-scale human behavior; often, individuals are less likely to believe large events of this scale can be so easily explained by ordinary details.

This inclination is furthered by a variety of possible strong individually and socially grounded reasons to believe in these conspiracy theories. The social nature of being a human holds influential merit when it comes to information evaluation. Conspiracy theories reaffirm the idea that people are part of moral social groups that have the ability to remain firm in the face of deep-seated threats. Conspiracy theories also feed into the human desire and motivation to maintain one's level of self-esteem, a concept known as self-enhancement. With climate change in particular, one possibility for the popularity of climate change conspiracy theories is that these theories knee-cap the reasoning that humans are culpable for the degradation of their own world and environment. This allows for maintenance of one's own self-esteem, and provides strong backing for belief in conspiracy theories. These climate change conspiracy theories pass the social blame to others, which upholds both the self and the in-group as moral and legitimate, making them highly appealing to those who perceive a threat to the esteem of themselves or their group. In a similar vein, much like how conspiracy belief is linked with narcissism, it is also predicted by collective narcissism. Collective narcissism is a belief in the distinction of one's own group whilst believing that those outside the group do not give the group enough recognition.

A variety of factors related to the nature of climate change science itself also enable the proliferation of conspiratorial beliefs. Climate change is a complicated field of science for lay people to make sense of. Research has experimentally indicated that people are used to creating patterns where there are none when they perceive a loss of control in order to return the world to one they can make sense of. Research indicates that people hold stronger beliefs about conspiracies when they exhibit distress as a consequence of uncertainty, which are both prominent when it comes to climate change science. Additionally, in order to meet the psychological desire for clear, cognitive closure, the likes of which is not consistently accessible to lay people regarding climate change, people often lean on conspiracy theories. Bearing this in mind, it is also crucial to note that conspiracy belief is conversely lessened in intensity when individuals have their sense of control affirmed.

People with certain cognitive tendencies are also more drawn to conspiracy theories about climate change as compared to others. Aside from narcissism as previously mentioned, conspiratorial beliefs are more predominantly found in those who consistently look for meanings or patterns in their world, which often includes those who believe in paranormal activities. Climate change conspiracy disbelief is also linked with lower levels of education and analytic thinking. If a person has a predisposed inclination towards perceiving others’ actions as having been actively done willfully even when no such thing is happening, they are more likely to buy into conspiratorial thinking.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the increase of conspiratorial beliefs, contested science, skepticism, and overall denial of climate science. Researchers studying science skepticism of vaccination for COVID-19 see direct linkages between this and science skepticism for other large-scale domain issues like that of climate science.

Threat to self-interest

The realisation that an individual's actions contribute to climate change can threaten their self-interest and compromise their psychological integrity. The threat to self-interest can often result in ‘denialism’ – a refusal to accept and even deny the scientific evidence- manifested across all levels of society. Large organisations that have a strong vested interest in activities directly responsible for climate change, such as fossil fuel companies, may even promote climate change denial through the spread of misinformation.

Denial is manifested at the individual level where it is used to protect the self from overwhelming emotional responses to climate change. This is often referred to as ‘soft denial’ or ‘disavowal’ in the relevant literature. Here the dangers of climate change are experienced in a purely intellectual way, resulting in no psychological disturbance: cognition is split off from feeling. Disavowal can be induced by a wide variety of psychological processes including: the diffusion of responsibility, rationalisation, perceptual distortion, wishful thinking and projection. These are all avoidant ways of coping.

Framing

In popular climate discourse framing, the three dominant framing ideas have been apocalypse, uncertainty and high costs/losses. These framings create intense feelings of fear and doom and helplessness. Framing climate change in these ways creates thoughts that nothing can be done to change the trajectory, that any solution will be too expensive and do too little, or that it is not worth trying to find a solution to something we are unsure is happening. Climate change has been framed this way for years, and so these messages are instilled in peoples’ minds, elicited whenever the words "climate change" are brought up.

Ideology and religion

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of climate change varies widely by religious affiliation, with less than one-third of white evangelical Protestants holding that belief.

Ideologies, including suprahuman powers, technosalvation, and system justification, are all psychological barriers to climate change acceptance. Suprahuman powers describes the belief that humans cannot or should not interfere because they believe a religious deity will not turn on them or will do what it wants to do regardless of their intervention. Technosalvation is the ideology that technologies such as geoengineering will save us from climate change, and so mitigation behavior is not necessary. Another ideological barrier is the ideology of system justification, or the defense and justification of the status quo, so as to not "rock the boat" on a comfortable lifestyle.

Research found that 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern among fellow Americans. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to be 37–43%—barely half as much. Researchers have called this misperception a false social reality, a form of pluralistic ignorance.

Own behaviors, habits, aspirations

People are also very invested in their own behavior. Behavioral momentum, or daily habits, are one of the most important barriers to remove for climate change mitigation. Lastly, conflicting values, goals, and aspirations can interfere with the acceptance of climate change mitigation. Because many of the goals held by individuals directly conflict with climate change mitigation strategies, climate change gets pushed to the bottom of their list of values, so as to minimize the extent of its conflict.

One type of limited behavior is tokenism, where after completing one small task or engaging in one small behavior, the individual feels they have done their part to mitigate climate change, when in reality they could be doing much more. Individuals could also experience the rebound effect, where one positive activity is diminished or erased by a subsequent activity (like walking to work all week because you are flying across the country every weekend).

Financial investment in fossil fuels and other climate change inducing industries (sunk costs) is often a reason for denial of climate change. If one accepts that these things cause climate change, they would have to lose their investment, and so continued denial is more acceptable.

The difficulty of comprehending the sheer scale of global warming and its effects can result in sincere (albeit ill-founded) belief that individual changes in behavior will suffice to address the problem without requiring more fundamental structural changes.

Views of others and perceived risk

If someone is held in a negative light, it is not likely others will take guidance from them due to feelings of mistrust, inadequacy, denial of their beliefs, and reactance against statements they believe threaten their freedom.

Several types of perceived risk can occur when an individual is considering changing their behavior to accept and mitigate climate change: functional risk, physical risk, financial risk, social risk, psychological risk, and temporal risk. Due to the perception of all of these risks, the individual may just reject climate change altogether to avoid potential risks completely.

Social comparisons between individuals build social norms. These social norms then dictate how someone "should" behave in order to align with society's ideas of "proper" behavior. This barrier also includes perceived inequity, where an individual feels they should not or do not have to act a certain way because they believe no one else acts that way.

Psychological reasons for soft denial

There are several beliefs or thought patterns that tend to contribute to soft climate denial:

1. Psychological isolation and compartmentalization – Events of everyday life usually lack an obvious connection to global warming. As such, people compartmentalize their awareness of global warming as abstract knowledge without taking any practical action. Hoexter identifies isolation/compartmentalization as the most common facet of soft denial.
2. "Climate providentialism" – In post-industrial society, modern comforts and disconnection from nature lead to an assumption that the climate "will provide" for humans, regardless of drastic changes. Though named for a belief found in some forms of Christianity, Hoexter uses the term in a secular context and relates it to anthropocentrism.
3. "Carbon gradualism" – An assumption that global warming can be addressed though minor "tweaks" conducted over extended periods of time. Proposals for more drastic change may be more realistic, but appear "radical" by comparison.
4. Substitutionism – A tendency among politically engaged people to "substitute a high-minded pre-existing activist cause" in place of the more immediate challenge of fossil fuel phase-out. Hoexter associates substitutionism with eco-socialism, green anarchism, and the climate justice movement, which he said tends to prioritize "laudable and important concerns about environmental justice and inequality" at the expense of "the future-looking fight to stabilize the climate."
5. Intellectualization – Engaging with climate change in a primarily academic context makes the issue an abstraction, lacking the visceral stimuli that prompt people to take concrete action.
6. Localism – Emphasis on "small" changes to improve one's local environment is a well-intentioned but limited response to a problem on the scale of global warming.
7. "Moral or intellectual narcissism" – Deriving a misplaced sense of superiority over "hard" climate deniers, soft deniers may come to believe that simply acknowledging the existence of climate change or expressing concern is sufficient by itself.
8. "Confirmation of pre-existing worldview" – Because of cognitive inertia, people may fail to integrate the significance or scale of climate change the framework of their existing beliefs, knowledge, and priorities.
9. Millenarianism – Activists become transfixed with a grand vision of an eventual, fundamental transformation of society, supplanting meaningful concrete action at the day-to-day level.
10. Sectarianism – Activists may become preoccupied with a particular vision of climate policy and become caught up in the narcissism of small differences, tedious debates, and far-flung hypotheticals to the detriment of more productive activity.
11. "Commitment to Hedonism" – The looming dread of climate change can emotionally overwhelm a person and may prompt a retreat into pleasure for its own sake. Alternately, people may indulge in pleasurable activities that they worry may not be readily accessible in a future society adapted to climate change.
12. "Entente with nihilism, defeatism, and depression" – In Hoexter's view, genuine nihilism remains a tendency within "hard" denialism; however, people who feel disempowered or overwhelmed about climate change may come to accept an uneasy coexistence with such nihilism.

Examples

Opinions of five living demographic cohorts in the United States on climate change (Yellow bar is climate change denial.)

Soft climate denial has been ascribed to both liberals and conservatives, as well as proponents of market-based environmental policy instruments. It has also been used in self-criticism against tendencies toward complacency and inaction. Depending on perspective, sources may differ on whether a person engages in "soft" or "hard" denial (or neither). For example, the environmental policy of the Trump administration has been described as both "soft" and "hard" climate denial.

In Scientific American, Robert N. Proctor and Steve Lyons described Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times opinion columnist and self-described "climate agnostic", as a soft denialist:

The irony is that Stephens himself seems to presume that climate science must be understood in political terms—as part of a larger struggle between liberals and conservatives. But the reality of climate change has nothing to do with politics: it's an atmospheric fact, not a political fact. And the whole idea of needing to keep 'an open mind' to a legitimate 'controversy' is the very essence of modern 'soft' denialism.

It was pointed out in 2017 that all the other current opinion columnists at the New York Times expressed varying degrees of soft denial in their work: "Like many liberals, every current liberal NYT columnist remains stuck in various states of 'soft' climate denial". This applied to the writing of Stephens's fellow conservatives (Ross Douthat and David Brooks) as well as his liberal colleagues (Maureen Dowd, David Leonhardt, Frank Bruni, Gail Collins, Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman, and Roger Cohen).

Environmental science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, meteorology, mathematics and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geography, and atmospheric science) to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science emerged from the fields of natural history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems.

Environmental studies incorporates more of the social sciences for understanding human relationships, perceptions and policies towards the environment. Environmental engineering focuses on design and technology for improving environmental quality in every aspect.

Environmental scientists seek to understand the earth's physical, chemical, biological, and geological processes, and to use that knowledge to understand how issues such as alternative energy systems, pollution control and mitigation, natural resource management, and the effects of global warming and climate change influence and affect the natural systems and processes of earth. Environmental issues almost always include an interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Environmental scientists bring a systems approach to the analysis of environmental problems. Key elements of an effective environmental scientist include the ability to relate space, and time relationships as well as quantitative analysis.

Environmental science came alive as a substantive, active field of scientific investigation in the 1960s and 1970s driven by (a) the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to analyze complex environmental problems, (b) the arrival of substantive environmental laws requiring specific environmental protocols of investigation and (c) the growing public awareness of a need for action in addressing environmental problems. Events that spurred this development included the publication of Rachel Carson's landmark environmental book Silent Spring along with major environmental issues becoming very public, such as the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, and the Cuyahoga River of Cleveland, Ohio, "catching fire" (also in 1969), and helped increase the visibility of environmental issues and create this new field of study.

Terminology

See also: Glossary of environmental science

In common usage, "environmental science" and "ecology" are often used interchangeably, but technically, ecology refers only to the study of organisms and their interactions with each other as well as how they interrelate with environment. Ecology could be considered a subset of environmental science, which also could involve purely chemical or public health issues (for example) ecologists would be unlikely to study. In practice, there are considerable similarities between the work of ecologists and other environmental scientists. There is substantial overlap between ecology and environmental science with the disciplines of fisheries, forestry, and wildlife.

History

Ancient civilizations

Historical concern for environmental issues is well documented in archives around the world. Ancient civilizations were mainly concerned with what is now known as environmental science insofar as it related to agriculture and natural resources. Scholars believe that early interest in the environment began around 6000 BCE when ancient civilizations in Israel and Jordan collapsed due to deforestation. As a result, in 2700 BCE the first legislation limiting deforestation was established in Mesopotamia. Two hundred years later, in 2500 BCE, a community residing in the Indus River Valley observed the nearby river system in order to improve sanitation. This involved manipulating the flow of water to account for public health. In the Western Hemisphere, numerous ancient Central American city-states collapsed around 1500 BCE due to soil erosion from intensive agriculture. Those remaining from these civilizations took greater attention to the impact of farming practices on the sustainability of the land and its stable food production. Furthermore, in 1450 BCE the Minoan civilization on the Greek island of Crete declined due to deforestation and the resulting environmental degradation of natural resources. Pliny the Elder somewhat addressed the environmental concerns of ancient civilizations in the text Naturalis Historia, written between 77 and 79 ACE, which provided an overview of many related subsets of the discipline.

Although warfare and disease were of primary concern in ancient society, environmental issues played a crucial role in the survival and power of different civilizations. As more communities recognized the importance of the natural world to their long-term success, an interest in studying the environment came into existence.

Beginnings of environmental science

18th century

In 1735, the concept of binomial nomenclature is introduced by Carolus Linnaeus as a way to classify all living organisms, influenced by earlier works of Aristotle. His text, Systema Naturae, represents one of the earliest culminations of knowledge on the subject, providing a means to identify different species based partially on how they interact with their environment.

19th century

In the 1820s, scientists were studying the properties of gases, particularly those in the Earth's atmosphere and their interactions with heat from the Sun. Later that century, studies suggested that the Earth had experienced an Ice Age and that warming of the Earth was partially due to what are now known as greenhouse gases (GHG). The greenhouse effect was introduced, although climate science was not yet recognized as an important topic in environmental science due to minimal industrialization and lower rates of greenhouse gas emissions at the time.

Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking novel, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society.

Former President Richard Nixon visits the site of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which received intense media coverage and inspired a multitude of environmental legislation.

A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence the Montreal Protocol in 1987.

20th century

In the 1900s, the discipline of environmental science as it is known today began to take shape. The century is marked by significant research, literature, and international cooperation in the field.

In the early 20th century, criticism from dissenters downplayed the effects of global warming. At this time, few researchers were studying the dangers of fossil fuels. After a 1.3 degrees Celsius temperature anomaly was found in the Atlantic Ocean in the 1940s, however, scientists renewed their studies of gaseous heat trapping from the greenhouse effect (although only carbon dioxide and water vapor were known to be greenhouse gases then). Nuclear development following the Second World War allowed environmental scientists to intensively study the effects of carbon and make advancements in the field. Further knowledge from archaeological evidence brought to light the changes in climate over time, particularly ice core sampling.

Environmental science was brought to the forefront of society in 1962 when Rachel Carson published an influential piece of environmental literature, Silent Spring. Carson's writing led the American public to pursue environmental safeguards, such as bans on harmful chemicals like the insecticide DDT. Another important work, The Tragedy of the Commons, was published by Garrett Hardin in 1968 in response to accelerating natural degradation. In 1969, environmental science once again became a household term after two striking disasters: Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire due to the amount of pollution in its waters and a Santa Barbara oil spill endangered thousands of marine animals, both receiving prolific media coverage. Consequently, the United States passed an abundance of legislation, including the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The following year, in 1970, the first ever Earth Day was celebrated worldwide and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed, legitimizing the study of environmental science in government policy. In the next two years, the United Nations created the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Stockholm, Sweden to address global environmental degradation.

Much of the interest in environmental science throughout the 1970s and the 1980s was characterized by major disasters and social movements. In 1978, hundreds of people were relocated from Love Canal, New York after carcinogenic pollutants were found to be buried underground near residential areas. The next year, in 1979, the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a meltdown and raised concerns about the dangers of radioactive waste and the safety of nuclear energy. In response to landfills and toxic waste often disposed of near their homes, the official Environmental Justice Movement was started by a Black community in North Carolina in 1982. Two years later, the toxic methyl isocyanate gas was released to the public from a power plant disaster in Bhopal, India, harming hundreds of thousands of people living near the disaster site, the effects of which are still felt today. In a groundbreaking discovery in 1985, a British team of researchers studying Antarctica found evidence of a hole in the ozone layer, inspiring global agreements banning the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were previously used in nearly all aerosols and refrigerants. Notably, in 1986, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine released radioactive waste to the public, leading to international studies on the ramifications of environmental disasters. Over the next couple of years, the Brundtland Commission (previously known as the World Commission on Environment and Development) published a report titled Our Common Future and the Montreal Protocol formed the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as international communication focused on finding solutions for climate change and degradation. In the late 1980s, the Exxon Valdez company was fined for spilling large quantities of crude oil off the coast of Alaska and the resulting cleanup, involving the work of environmental scientists. After hundreds of oil wells were burned in combat in 1991, warfare between Iraq and Kuwait polluted the surrounding atmosphere just below the air quality threshold environmental scientists believed was life-threatening.

21st century

The Paris Agreement (formerly the Kyoto Protocol) is adopted in 2016. Nearly every country in the United Nations has signed the treaty, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Many niche disciplines of environmental science have emerged over the years, although climatology is one of the most known topics. Since the 2000s, environmental scientists have focused on modeling the effects of climate change and encouraging global cooperation to minimize potential damages. In 2002, the Society for the Environment as well as the Institute of Air Quality Management were founded to share knowledge and develop solutions around the world. Later, in 2008, the United Kingdom became the first country to pass legislation (the Climate Change Act) that aims to reduce carbon dioxide output to a specified threshold. In 2016 the Kyoto Protocol became the Paris Agreement, which sets concrete goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restricts Earth's rise in temperature to a 2 degrees Celsius maximum. The agreement is one of the most expansive international efforts to limit the effects of global warming to date.

Most environmental disasters in this time period involve crude oil pollution or the effects of rising temperatures. In 2010, BP was responsible for the largest American oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the Deepwater Horizon spill, which killed a number of the company's workers and released large amounts of crude oil into the water. Furthermore, throughout this century, much of the world has been ravaged by widespread wildfires and water scarcity, prompting regulations on the sustainable use of natural resources as determined by environmental scientists.

A false color composite of the greater Boston area, created using remote sensing technology, reveals otherwise not visible characteristics about the land cover and the health of the surrounding ecosystems.

The 21st century is marked by significant technological advancements. New technology in environmental science has transformed how researchers gather information about various topics in the field. Research in engines, fuel efficiency, and decreasing emissions from vehicles since the times of the Industrial Revolution has reduced the amount of carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Furthermore, investment in researching and developing clean energy (i.e. wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal power) has significantly increased in recent years, indicating the beginnings of the divestment from fossil fuel use. Geographic information systems (GIS) are used to observe sources of air or water pollution through satellites and digital imagery analysis. This technology allows for advanced farming techniques like precision agriculture as well as monitoring water usage in order to set market prices. In the field of water quality, developed strains of natural and manmade bacteria contribute to bioremediation, the treatment of wastewaters for future use. This method is more eco-friendly and cheaper than manual cleanup or treatment of wastewaters. Most notably, the expansion of computer technology has allowed for large data collection, advanced analysis, historical archives, public awareness of environmental issues, and international scientific communication. The ability to crowdsource on the Internet, for example, represents the process of collectivizing knowledge from researchers around the world to create increased opportunity for scientific progress. With crowdsourcing, data is released to the public for personal analyses which can later be shared as new information is found. Another technological development, blockchain technology, monitors and regulates global fisheries. By tracking the path of fish through global markets, environmental scientists can observe whether certain species are being overharvested to the point of extinction. Additionally, remote sensing allows for the detection of features of the environment without physical intervention. The resulting digital imagery is used to create increasingly accurate models of environmental processes, climate change, and much more. Advancements to remote sensing technology are particularly useful in locating the nonpoint sources of pollution and analyzing ecosystem health through image analysis across the electromagnetic spectrum. Lastly, thermal imaging technology is used in wildlife management to catch and discourage poachers and other illegal wildlife traffickers from killing endangered animals, proving useful for conservation efforts. Artificial intelligence has also been used to predict the movement of animal populations and protect the habitats of wildlife.

Components

Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right)

The Earth's atmosphere

Atmospheric sciences

Main article: Atmospheric sciences

Atmospheric sciences focus on the Earth's atmosphere, with an emphasis upon its interrelation to other systems. Atmospheric sciences can include studies of meteorology, greenhouse gas phenomena, atmospheric dispersion modeling of airborne contaminants, sound propagation phenomena related to noise pollution, and even light pollution.

Taking the example of the global warming phenomena, physicists create computer models of atmospheric circulation and infrared radiation transmission, chemists examine the inventory of atmospheric chemicals and their reactions, biologists analyze the plant and animal contributions to carbon dioxide fluxes, and specialists such as meteorologists and oceanographers add additional breadth in understanding the atmospheric dynamics.

Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt and modify their environment by forming calcium carbonate skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species.

Ecology

Main article: Ecology

As defined by the Ecological Society of America, "Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment; it seeks to understand the vital connections between plants and animals and the world around them." Ecologists might investigate the relationship between a population of organisms and some physical characteristic of their environment, such as concentration of a chemical; or they might investigate the interaction between two populations of different organisms through some symbiotic or competitive relationship. For example, an interdisciplinary analysis of an ecological system which is being impacted by one or more stressors might include several related environmental science fields. In an estuarine setting where a proposed industrial development could impact certain species by water and air pollution, biologists would describe the flora and fauna, chemists would analyze the transport of water pollutants to the marsh, physicists would calculate air pollution emissions and geologists would assist in understanding the marsh soils and bay muds.

Environmental chemistry

Main article: Environmental chemistry

Environmental chemistry is the study of chemical alterations in the environment. Principal areas of study include soil contamination and water pollution. The topics of analysis include chemical degradation in the environment, multi-phase transport of chemicals (for example, evaporation of a solvent containing lake to yield solvent as an air pollutant), and chemical effects upon biota.

As an example study, consider the case of a leaking solvent tank which has entered the habitat soil of an endangered species of amphibian. As a method to resolve or understand the extent of soil contamination and subsurface transport of solvent, a computer model would be implemented. Chemists would then characterize the molecular bonding of the solvent to the specific soil type, and biologists would study the impacts upon soil arthropods, plants, and ultimately pond-dwelling organisms that are the food of the endangered amphibian.

Geosciences

Main article: Geosciences

Geosciences include environmental geology, environmental soil science, volcanic phenomena and evolution of the Earth's crust. In some classification systems this can also include hydrology, including oceanography.

As an example study, of soils erosion, calculations would be made of surface runoff by soil scientists. Fluvial geomorphologists would assist in examining sediment transport in overland flow. Physicists would contribute by assessing the changes in light transmission in the receiving waters. Biologists would analyze subsequent impacts to aquatic flora and fauna from increases in water turbidity.

Open-pit coal mining at Garzweiler, Germany

Regulations driving the studies

Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States

In the United States the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 set forth requirements for analysis of federal government actions (such as highway construction projects and land management decisions) in terms of specific environmental criteria. Numerous state laws have echoed these mandates, applying the principles to local-scale actions. The upshot has been an explosion of documentation and study of environmental consequences before the fact of development actions.

One can examine the specifics of environmental science by reading examples of Environmental Impact Statements prepared under NEPA such as: Wastewater treatment expansion options discharging into the San Diego/Tijuana Estuary, Expansion of the San Francisco International Airport, Development of the Houston, Metro Transportation system, Expansion of the metropolitan Boston MBTA transit system, and Construction of Interstate 66 through Arlington, Virginia.

In England and Wales the Environment Agency (EA), formed in 1996, is a public body for protecting and improving the environment and enforces the regulations listed on the communities and local government site. (formerly the office of the deputy prime minister). The agency was set up under the Environment Act 1995 as an independent body and works closely with UK Government to enforce the regulations.

Mental health of Jesus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_of_Jesus

Ecce Homo, by Antonello da Messina, 1473

The question of whether the historical Jesus was in good mental health is a subject of consideration for multiple psychologists, philosophers, historians, and writers. The first person, after several other attempts at tackling the subject, who broadly and thoroughly questioned the mental health of Jesus was French psychologist Charles Binet-Sanglé, the chief physician of Paris and author of a four-volume work La Folie de Jésus (The Madness of Jesus, 1908–1915). This view finds both supporters and opponents.

Opinions challenging the sanity of Jesus

The assessment of the sanity of Jesus first occurs in the gospels. The Gospel of Mark reports the opinion of members of his family who believe that Jesus "is beside himself." Some psychiatrists, religious scholars and writers explain that, according to the gospels, Jesus's family (Mark 3:21), some followers (John 7:20, see also John 11:41–53), and contemporaries, at various points in time, regarded him as delusional, possessed by demons, or insane.

And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself". And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Be-el′zebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons".

— Mark 3:21–22, RSV^[11]

The accusation contained in the Gospel of John is more literal:

There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, "He has a demon, and he is mad; why listen to him?" Others said, "These are not the sayings of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"

— John 10:19–21, RSV^[12]

Justin Meggitt [Wikidata], a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, suggests in his article "The Madness of King Jesus: Why was Jesus Put to Death, but his Followers were not?" (2007) and in his book The Madness of King Jesus (2010) that Pilate and other Romans regarded Jesus as an insane lunatic. According to the Gospels, Jesus was presented to Pilate and sentenced to death as a royal pretender, but the standard Roman procedure was the prosecution and execution of would-be insurgents with their leaders. Therefore, to suggest that Jesus was put to death by the Roman authorities as some kind of royal pretender does not explain sufficiently why he was executed, but his disciples were not. Jean Meslier (1664–1729) had similar thoughts in the 18th century. In chapters 33 and 34 of his Testament, argues that Jesus "was really a madman, a fanatic" (étoit véritablement un fou, un insensé, un fanatique).

Challenging the sanity of Jesus continued in the 19th century with the first quest for the historical Jesus. David Friedrich Strauss (Das Leben Jesu, 1864) claimed that Jesus was a fanatic. Lemuel K. Washburn opined in a pamphlet Was Jesus insane? (1889) that "Jesus was not divine, but insane". Oskar Panizza introduced Jesus as a psychopathological and paranoid case. Oskar Holtzmann in War Jesus Ekstatiker? (1903) presented Jesus as "ecstatic", which he described as a pathologically-strong excitability of the imagination and the power of will. Georg Lomer [de] (as George de Loosten, 1905) attempted to retrospectively diagnose Jesus as generally mentally ill, similarly to Jean Meslier. Emil Rasmussen [ru] (1905) determined Jesus to be either epileptic or paranoid. Using a few examples, he developed a description of the typical pathological prophet ("Prophetentypus") and applied it to Jesus. Julius Baumann [sv] (1908) hypothesised that the abnormalities he found in Jesus' behaviour could be explained by a nerve overstimulation (Nervenüberreizung). However, it was not until the publication of Charles Binet-Sanglé's four-volume work La folie de Jésus from 1908 to 1915 that the topic was extensively and visibly discussed. Binet-Sanglé diagnosed Jesus as suffering from religious paranoia:

In short, the nature of the hallucinations of Jesus, as they are described in the orthodox Gospels, permits us to conclude that the founder of Christian religion was afflicted with religious paranoia.

— (vol. 2, p. 393)

His view was shared by the New York psychiatrist and neurologist William Hirsch [de], who in 1912 published his study, Religion and Civilization: The Conclusions of a Psychiatrist, which enumerated a number of Jesus' mentally-aberrant behaviours. Hirsch agreed with Binet-Sanglé in that Jesus had been afflicted with hallucinations and pointed to his "megalomania, which mounted ceaselessly and immeasurably". Hirsch concluded that Jesus was just a "paranoid":

But Christ offers in every respect an absolutely typical picture of a wellknown mental disease. All that we know of him corresponds so exactly to the clinical aspect of paranoia, that it is hardly conceivable how anybody at all acquainted with mental disorders, can entertain the slightest doubt as to the correctness of the diagnosis.

— (p. 103)

According to Hirsch, Jesus, as a typical paranoid, applied prophecies about the coming of the messiah to himself, and had a deep hatred towards anyone who disagreed with him on everything. The Soviet psychiatrist Y. V. Mints (1927) also diagnosed Jesus as suffering from paranoia. The literature of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus in the works of Strauss, Renan, Nietzsche, and Binet-Sanglé, put forward two main themes: mental illness and deception. That was reflected in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita in which Jesus is depicted by Pontius Pilate as a harmless madman. It was only at the turn of the 1920s and the 1930s that the mythological option, the denial of the existence of Jesus, won the upper hand in Soviet propaganda. Jesus' mental health was also questioned by the British psychiatrists William Sargant and Raj Persaud, and a number of psychologists of the psychoanalytic orientation, like Georges Berguer [de] in his study Quelques traits de la vie de Jésus au point de vue psychologique et psychanalytique (1920).

Władysław Witwicki, a rationalist philosopher and psychologist, in the comments to his own translation of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Dobra Nowina według Mateusza i Marka (The Good News according to Matthew and Mark [pl]), which is in fact a psychobiography of Jesus, attributed that Jesus had subjectivism, an increased sense of his own power and superiority over others, egocentrism and the tendency to subjugate other people. He also had difficulties communicating with the outside world, as well as dissociative identity disorder, which made him a schizothymic or even schizophrenic type (according to Ernst Kretschmer's typology).

American philosopher and science skeptic Paul Kurtz, in one of his most influential writings, The Transcendental Temptation (1986, chapter Was Jesus disturbed?), notices that some passages in the gospels suggest that "Jesus was a disturbed personality." However, he notes, "It is difficult to be certain, since we have no way of submitting him to intensive psychiatric diagnosis." He states that if Jesus had any claim to divinity, "then he was deranged." According to Kurtz, Jesus "kept preaching that doomsday or the last days were at hand." In this context, he cites Matthew 16:28 and 24:34–35. He also quotes passages in the gospels in which Jesus' family (Mark 3:20–21) and other contemporary Jews (Mark 3:22, John 10:20) accused him of demonic possession and insanity.

The American theologian and psychologist of religion Donald Capps, in his book Jesus: A Psychological Biography (1989, 2000), diagnosed Jesus as a utopian-melancholic personality (he looked forward to a coming kingdom of God) with suicidal tendencies. New Testament scholar Andrew Jacob Mattill Jr. [Wikidata], in his essay contained in The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read (1993), draws attention to the ever-increasing megalomania of "John's Jesus" (described in the Gospel of John 6:29, 35, 38, 40, 47-58; 7:38; 8:12; 11:25-26; 14:6, 13-14), and concludes:

The more trust one puts in the Fourth Gospel's portrait of Jesus the more difficult it is to defend the sanity of Jesus.

The English psychiatrist Anthony Storr in his final book Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996) suggested that there are psychological similarities between crazy "messiahs" such as Jim Jones and David Koresh and respected religious leaders including Jesus. Storr tracks typical patterns, often involving psychotic disorders that shape the development of the guru. His study is an attempt to look at Jesus as one of many gurus. Storr agrees with most scholars of historical Jesus, who are inclined to the hypothesis of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet:

It seems inescapable that Jesus did share the apocalyptic view that God's final conquest of evil was at hand and that God's kingdom would be established upon earth in the near future.

Storr recognises Jesus' many similarities to other gurus. It was, for example, going through a period of internal conflict during his fasting in the desert. According to Storr, if Jesus really considered himself a deputy for God and believed that one day he would come down from heaven to rule, he was very similar to the gurus whom he had previously described as preachers of delusions possessed by mania of greatness. He notes that Jesus was not ideal in family life (Mark 3:31–35, Mark 13:12–13). Gurus often remain indifferent to family ties. Other similarities, according to Storr, include Jesus' faith in receiving a special revelation from God and a tendency to elitism, in the sense that Jesus believed that he had been specially marked by God.

American neuroendocrinology researcher Robert Sapolsky in his essay included in the book The Trouble with Testosterone: and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (1997, 1998) suggests the occurrence of schizotypal ("half-crazy", p. 248) behavior and metamagical thinking in shamans, Jesus and other charismatic religious leaders:

Oh, sure, one can overdo it, and our history is darkly stained with abortive religious movements inspired by messianic crackpots. (...) However, if you get the metamagical thoughts and behaviors to the right extent and at the right time and place, then people might just get the day off from work on your birthday for a long time to come.

— (p. 256)

Then Sapolsky notes that "plausible links can be made among schizotypal behaviour, metamagical thought, and the founding of certain religious beliefs in both non-Western and Western societies." (p. 256) According to him: "The notion of the psychopathology of the shaman works just as readily in understanding the roots of major Western religions as well." (p. 255)

In 1998–2000, Leszek Nowak (born 1962) from Poznań, Poland authored a study in which, based on his own history of religious delusion of mission and overvalued ideas and information communicated in the Gospels, made an attempt at reconstructing Jesus' psyche, with the view of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet, taking into account the hypothesis of indirect suicide. He does so in chapters containing, in sequence, an analysis of character traits of the "savior of mankind", a description of the possible course of events from the period of Jesus' public activity, and a naturalistic explanation of his miracles.

In 2012, a team of psychiatrists, behavioral psychologists, neurologists and neuropsychiatrists from the Harvard Medical School published a research that suggested the development of a new diagnostic category of psychiatric disorders related to religious delusion and hyperreligiosity. They compared the thoughts and behaviors of the most important figures in the Bible, such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul, with patients affected by mental disorders related to the psychotic spectrum using different clusters of disorders and diagnostic criteria (DSM-IV-TR), and concluded that these Biblical figures "may have had psychotic symptoms that contributed inspiration for their revelations", such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, delusional disorder, delusions of grandeur, auditory-visual hallucinations, paranoia, Geschwind syndrome (especially Paul), and abnormal experiences associated with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). According to the authors, in the case of Jesus, it could have been: paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. They hypothesized that Jesus may have sought death through "suicide-by-proxy" (indirect suicide).

Opinions defending the sanity of Jesus

Opinions and publications questioning the sanity of Jesus, especially Georg Lomer, Charles Binet-Sanglé and William Hirsch, caused polemical reactions. They were first challenged by Albert Schweitzer in his doctoral thesis, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism, (Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu: Darstellung und Kritik, 1913) and by the American theologian Walter E. Bundy [Wikidata] in his 1922 book, The psychic health of Jesus. Bundy summarized his defense of Jesus′ sanity:

A pathography of Jesus is possible only upon the basis of a lack of acquaintance with the course and conclusions of New Testament criticism and an amateur application of the principles of the science of psychiatry.

— (p. 268)

Earlier the mental health of Jesus was defended by: the German Catholic theologian, professor of apologetics at the University of Würzburg, Philipp Kneib (Moderne Leben-Jesu-Forschung unter dem Einflusse der Psychiatrie, 1908) – against the arguments of Holtzmann, Lomer, Rasmussen and Baumann; the German evangelical theologian and pastor Hermann Werner [Wikidata] (Die psychische Gesundheit Jesu, 1908) – against the arguments of Holtzmann, Lomer and Rasmussen; and also by the German psychiatrist, chief physician of the Friedrichsberg Mental Asylum in Hamburg, Heinrich Schaefer [Wikidata] (Jesus in psychiatrischer Beleuchtung: eine Kontroverse, 1910) – against the arguments of Lomer and Rasmussen.

The mental health of Jesus is defended by Christian psychiatrists Olivier Quentin Hyder, Pablo Martinez, and Andrew Sims. Christian apologists, such as Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel, also take up the subject of Jesus' sanity defense. The defense of Jesus' mental health was devoted to an editorial in the magazine of Italian Jesuits La Civiltà Cattolica, published November 5, 1994. To the title question E se Gesù si fosse ingannato? ("What if Jesus had deceived himself?") the editors replied in the negative by arguing that Jesus was not a fanatic or megalomaniac but a mentally-healthy and very realistic person. Therefore, he did not deceive himself by saying that he was the messiah and the Son of God.

American biblical scholar James H. Charlesworth, in his essay Jesus Research and the Appearance of Psychobiography (2002), discusses previous attempts to write a psychobiography of Jesus. In the final reflection, he suggests that earlier (created at the beginning of the 20th century) images of a mentally disturbed, paranoid Jesus with hallucinations resulted from comparing him to paranoids in the clinics of their creators and applying Freudian psychology to ancient sources. According to the author, Jesus' intentions should be examined in the context of his place and era, using historical research.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his book Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (2007):

A broad current of liberal scholarship has interpreted Jesus′ Baptism as a vocational experience. After having led a perfectly normal life in the province of Galilee, at the moment of his Baptism he is said to have had an earth-shattering experience. It was then, we are told, that he became aware of his special relationship to God and his religious mission. This mission, moreover, supposedly originated from the expectation motif then dominant in Israel, creatively reshaped by John, and from the emotional upheaval that the event of his Baptism brought about in Jesus′ life. But none of this can be found in the texts. However much scholarly erudition goes into the presentation of this reading, it has to be seen as more akin to a "Jesus novel" than as an actual interpretation of the texts. The texts give us no window into Jesus′ inner life – Jesus stands above our psychologizing. (Guardini, Das Wesen des Christentums).

American philosopher and Christian minister Robin Meyers devotes the first chapter of his book The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (2012) to defending the mental health of Jesus. According to him, "many of those who questioned the mental health of Jesus did it to render claims about him suspect and thus dismiss the gospel as nonsense" (p. 28). Further (p. 32) the author quotes Thomas Merton in reaction: "The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless."

C. S. Lewis famously considered Jesus' mental health in what is known as Lewis's trilemma (the formulation quoted here is by John Duncan):

Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.

The agnostic atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman wrote on his own blog:

And he may well have thought (I think he did think) that he would be made the messiah in the future kingdom. That may have been a rather exalted view of himself, but I don't think it makes Jesus crazy. It makes him an unusually confident apocalyptic prophet. There were others with visions of grandeur at the time. I don't think that makes him mentally ill. It makes him a first-century apocalyptic Jew.