Climate change a values problem: expert

MANY climate sceptics do not trust environmentalists because they consider them "borderline communists" who want to curtail people's freedom, a leading US social scientist says.

Speaking on Wednesday night, the University of Michigan's Andy Hoffman said US global warming sceptics had "a serious distrust of the political ideology behind its proponents".

"The fear is that environmentalists are left-leaning, they are socialist, borderline communists, and they are using the government to try to control your freedom," Prof Hoffman said in the Sydney Ideas lecture at the University of Sydney.

"The expression for environmentalists is watermelons, they're green on the outside, but they're red on the inside. That really represents their feeling."

Mr Hoffman said a scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change had failed to lead to action on the issue because it was really a "debate over values".

He said despite compelling science, just 40 per cent of Australians believed humans contributed to a hotter planet.

"It's not about CO2, it's not about climate models, it's about values, it's about world views," the business and environment academic said.

"It's because deeply held beliefs that they hold dear are under threat."

Climate change was such a "thorny issue" because it represented "an existential challenge to our world views", he said.

In that context, he said giving climate deniers more scientific evidence was like "finding yourself talking to a wall, they're not going to hear it".

Professor Hoffman said a "social consensus" to fight climate change needed to be built, similar to that created in the past to combat smoking and slavery.

"One of the most important first steps in engaging the debate is not to blame or mock or ridicule," he said.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Climate change a values problem: expert

Dengan url

https://petualanganseo.blogspot.com/2013/03/climate-change-values-problem-expert.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Climate change a values problem: expert

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Climate change a values problem: expert

sebagai sumbernya