Learning together out of climate change denial

Abstract

Climate change denial is often rooted in an array of conspiracy theories with climate change itself viewed by some as the real conspiracy. While not all of us are climate change conspiracy theorists, it is upsetting for most of us to learn and accept that our climate is changing, that it is primarily human-caused, and that it is harming people, animals, and other living organisms. It is even harder to accept this new reality when it goes against our core and fundamental beliefs, and against the professed beliefs and positions of those groups with which we identify. The media-whether old or new-has not really helped educate, and has tended to reinforce what is termed 'myside' bias. Those of us in adult education know that presenting the correct information or facts is not enough to really teach people. Instead, I sense that learning to live together, to accept the painfulness of learning, and connecting in a shared concern for our fragile blue planet and what we have managed to create, needs to be part of the answer-as complex as this topic is.Shortly after waking up earlier this week, I sat up in bed, and scrolled down my newsfeed to read how, in the coming decades, melting "zombie ice" from Greenland was likely to lead to previously unthinkable levels of sea rising, potentially "entirely redrawing the map" of my city, Vancouver, BC (Mannie, 2022). The ocean is meters from my apartment building. It's enough for anyone to want to stick their head back under the covers, and pretend it isn't happening. As Kübler-Ross (1969) famously wrote, denial can often be the first way we cope with our own and our loved ones' death and dying. Climate change denial, then, seems like a pretty understandable response-it is a coping strategy that helps us deal with the overwhelming amalgam of difficult feelings that can arise when we ponder our own mortality, the death of species, and the suffering of fellow humans. On some level, most of us are climate change deniers. Greta Thunberg (2019) and Naomi Klein (2014) argue that ifThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.