What to do with Climate Change Deniers?

(Image from Athal & Athal, 2019)

The title of my research for my Master’s in Psychology was ‘From Fear to Action: Exploring Climate Anxiety's Role in Sustainable Community Development’. Now during the recruitment stage while I was looking for participants for interviews, I put out an advertisement on social media. This was a paid advert that was put out over Facebook and Instagram and it was really interesting to see the response. The responses form Instagram were nothing but love and respect while the responses from Facebook were nothing but hate and disrespect. It would appear that the infamous algorithm on Facebook aims to stir up hate comments in a desperate attempt to try and keep people’s attention. Comments on my post ranged from being called a ‘charlatan’ or that this research was aimed at manufacturing climate anxiety and was funded by the government in order to keep us all in the grip of fear and control. So, just that we are clear here climate change is the natural shift in earths climate which has been exacerbated by human activities such as burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of our natural environment which has caused global temperature rise and biodiversity collapse for example. Climate anxiety is not a mental disorder but it is a very real response to the realisation of what we humans are doing to this planet, our home.

Some people who have seen the comments of my Facebook page have asked me: ‘So what do we do about the climate change deniers?’ Well you treat them with respect and compassion and I’m going to explain why….

To understand denial we need to understand how our mind works. The easiest way to try and explain this is through the concept of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. Lets break it down.

The Id

The Id is the most primitive and basic structure of our mind. It is associated with a part of our brain called the brainstem which is located at the very top of our spine at the base of our brain. It’s function is to keep us alive, when we are hungry it triggers us to eat, when we need love it demands it etc etc. However, the Id has a problem, it does not care about how it gets it’s needs met, and the best way of seeing the Id in action is in a baby. Watch all the unregulated emotion pure out of them as they demand all there wants and needs. Now this can’t continue, so in steps the Ego.

The Ego

The Ego is associated with the limbic system, an area of the brain involved in emotional control. Around the age of six months old, the baby soon realises that it is not the centre of the universe and is not one with the mother. The baby realises it is a separate being and it’s demands can no longer be instantly gratified. The demands of the Id are still there, but the Ego regulates the Id and the baby now learns to delay gratification. One example where you can see this Ego developing in young children is during toilet training when they realise they can hold onto things and release things at will, they learn self-control. But now the young child must learn the rules of society, so in steps the Superego.

The Superego

The Superego is part of the last brain structure to develop in young children, the pre-frontal cortex, which is the part at the very front of your brain. This part develops at around the age of six years and it is here that our personalities are developed. But it is also where we learn all the rules and regulations, whether it’s laws or the unspoken rules around social norms, while we navigate the world around us. All very well and good, however we have a problem, the Id still wants it’s demands met, but these rules of world are too restrictive, so it’s back to the Ego to solve the problem.

Repression

The Ego must meet the demands of the Id while also conforming to the rules of the Superego. The Id is very emotional but the Superego is not. The Ego’s answer to the problem is repression. It represses all socially unacceptable emotions, but this is only a temporary fix, remember, the demands of the Id MUST always be expressed, so the Ego must express these emotions in a different way. One of the ways it does this via projection, for example, the Id feels angry, but some societies don’t encourage the expression of anger toward each other, so the Ego finds and alternative. A good example of this at the moment is racism, the Ego sees a group expressing anger at a minority group, thinks I’ll join that group so now I can satisfy the anger of the Id even though what the Id is really angry at has nothing to do with this minority group, but the anger get expressed so job done for the Ego.

The other way the Ego deals with the repressed emotions of the Id is through denial. Some of these emotions are so overwhelming that the Ego cannot deal them, so the answer is denial that they exist. However, the energy of these emotions MUST go somewhere. Sometimes, these painful emotions get expressed through the body through such things like chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, IBS etc. When feelings like these are so far repressed by the Ego, any hint that these emotions exist by external forces and the Ego works even harder at keeping them at bay. The poor Ego, it’s exhausted a lot of the time, it's no wonder some people suffer chronic fatigue syndrome.

The pain we all feel to witness the destruction of the planet, our home, before our very eyes is just too much for some people. Their emotions get repressed, and the Ego uses denial to deal with it. And I suppose when a person like this comes across a social media post advertising to recruit people for climate anxiety research, it can be very triggering for them. When we see how the mind works, and how we are not actually in control of a lot of our reactions, the Ego is, it is very understandable why climate deniers react the way they do. So all as I can say is treat climate deniers with compassion, they are in a lot of pain, any suggestion that they are in denial about climate change will only make their repression worse, be beside them and maybe their Ego will learn that it is a safe place to express emotions.

Remember, this battle of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego going on is in your unconscious, you are not aware of it. But you can become aware of the Ego. The Ego is that inner voice you hear chattering away inside your head keeping you distracted from the Id, it sounds like you, but it is not you. It is a structure of your brain designed to keep you safe. You are not the Ego, you are the person paying attention to it.

Ultan Cavanagh

BA (Hons) Psych, MSc Appl Psych, M.Ps.S.I

Reference for image used:

Athal, K., & Athal, K. (2019, September 27). Climate change: more eco, less ego because there’s no planet B - YUVA. YUVA - Driving Change as Leading NGO in Mauritius & India. https://yuva.info/mauritius/2019/09/climate-change-more-eco-less-ego-because-theres-no-planet-b/