Rewiring the brain for climate action
My climate doom mindset was cemented by David Quammen’s immersive book The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. He first explains island biogeography. Islands have rapid cycles of evolution, which lead to the unique species we associate with islands, especially very large or very small animals. Think Galapagos tortoises, pygmy elephants, or huge goat-eating Komodo dragons. Then, he covers research that shows how the speed of evolution - and extinction - is directly correlated with the size of islands. The smaller the island, the faster the cycle. Finally, he stuns you with the reality that human activity creates “islands” of forests, grasslands, and other natural habitats, which accelerates evolution…and extinction.
Though the book ends on a hopeful note, mass extinction events seemed inevitable: I saw no way to halt the unstoppable force of human expansion on a global scale.
As extreme weather events and dire climate warnings passed through the news, any individual action felt pointless compared to the challenge at hand. There was a strong desire in my social circles to “quit our jobs and work on climate” without having clear direction on what that really meant, which led to guilt and paralysis.
At some point, I realized that I couldn’t use my regular thinking patterns for this unprecedented problem. So instead of trying to figure out what to “do,” I invested time in finding new ways to think. Below I outline three mindset shifts and how I’ve applied them to rewire my brain for climate action.
Mindset shift #1: Me —> Us, as part of an ecosystem
The shift
My formative intellectual years have been shaped by a focus on individual optimization and evolutionary “survival of the fittest” explanations of human behavior and biology. What I’ve noticed more recently is a shift toward ecological metaphors emphasizing interdependence.
The human body was understood to be an independent organism, comprised of body parts and separate systems: feet, bones, brain, heart, digestive system, and more. The book I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong summarizes the emerging research into the billions of microbes that are effectively part of the human body, shaking up how we think about ourselves as singular organisms.
Women’s success in the workplace was understood to be determined by how far we could “lean in” and fix individual deficiencies like speaking up in meetings. Now, the movement to bring attention and dignity to caregiving has elevated the role of systemic options like paid family leave and better pay for caregivers. (Sidebar: I often think about how different the conversations would be if Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2015 book Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family, which covers these systemic issues, had gotten the same level of attention as her explosive “Why Women Can’t Have It All” article or Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.)
We've also layered these notions of individualism and competition onto non-humans, speculating that trees “compete” for space and light in pursuit of their own individual growth. A number of books are touching on the paradigm shift in forestry which suggests that trees cooperate - within and across species - with an underground network of roots and fungi to share resources. (For further reading, try The Overstory by Richard Powers).
The application
As I’ve noticed more of these “ecosystem” metaphors take hold in different domains, I noticed one of my mental obstacles to action. When I thought about who would be affected by climate change, I believed I personally would be fine - it was really others who were vulnerable that I should worry about. But this well-intentioned thinking created distance between myself and the problem. Thinking of myself as part of the ecosystem - not above it or outside it - increases the urgency to work on climate action.
Mindset shift #2: Thinking of impact as linear and predictable —> Appreciating the “quantum” nature of social impact
The shift
As I was graduating from school, it was common to talk about choosing a career path that would allow you to have “the most impact.”
This framework was paralyzing as I thought about how to apply it to climate change, especially given how little I knew about the space. Solar, wind, the “grid,” electric cars - I barely knew anything about these topics, let alone the relative impact of them.
The mental model that released me from this paralysis was a talk from Climate Con, an online conference for regular people who want to learn about climate change. The speaker talked about moving away from thinking about impact as straightforward and direct, like Newtonian physics easily predicting the path of a billiard ball into the pocket. And moving toward the idea of impact as being indirect, like fields of energy in quantum physics.
Honestly, the metaphor didn’t totally make sense, even as someone who went through a quantum physics book phase, but it was different enough to dislodge an old mental model and create a new one - which nicely illustrates the point about the indirect impact of this talk.
The application
We can’t always identify which action will create the most impact. All you can do is put out energy - through conversations, writing, or action - and see where it takes you.
Mindset shift #3: Scarcity —> Abundance and regeneration
The shift
As an economics major, the scarcity mindset is drilled into you from the moment you draw the first supply and demand curve in Econ 101. Everything is scarce - natural resources, factory resources, human attention, time. In Poor Economics, the economists argue that poverty is not just a scarcity of physical resources but the psychological implications of a scarcity mindset. It creates hoarding, a discounting of the future relative to the present, and more.
The application
The scarcity mindset has dominated conversations about climate until recently. The emphasis on reducing and reusing (while important to do!) has unintentionally painted a picture of a constrained, less happy, environmentally-friendly future. A shift in messaging toward abundance shows the gains we could see if we live in greater harmony with the planet. The Sunrise Movement thrust the Green New Deal concept into the political conversation, offering an alternative to the image of out-of-work coal miners - instead, they talk about the millions of good jobs that could be created if we mobilize the country toward climate action. This podcast episode covers the amazing benefits that could come from switching our appliances from gas to electric. The book Drawdown (video summaries here) covers both existing and emerging technology that combined, could actually get us to the point of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The abundance mindset also works well in thinking about our personal energy and time. Sometimes it can seem hard to fit in anything else other than family, basic physical needs, and work. Instead of focusing on the limited hours in a day, study which activities create energy. This often means creating, learning, and talking to people who are taking action.
Recommendations
📚The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen
📚I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
📚Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter
📚The Overstory by Richard Powers
📚Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken - Easy to skim, with 100 short chapters on different solutions. It was a good way to learn some of the basics about renewable energy sources and a fun dive into sci-fi-like emerging technologies like smart glass that automatically adjusts based on weather conditions.
📚The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graber and David Wengrow - Completely different topic (pre-historic human civilizations), but it leaves you with a feeling of optimism and agency (unlike make other books in this genre which are more deterministic about our fate)
📚What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker - A good intro into the weirdness of quantum physics and what it says about our universe