Americans See the Risks but Still Do Nothing

We're hardwired to ignore our fate

Photo by Jackman Chiu on Unsplash

A recent Yale climate opinion survey shows that the vast majority of Americans know that climate change is a real threat.

This same study showed, however, that most people felt it was someone else's problem. They didn't see it affecting them - instead, it is a problem for animals, foreign countries, other Americans and future generations.

Here's a snippet of the survey results:

"Global warming is a problem and we're causing it"

"I'm worried about global warming and it's already a problem"

"The problem is affecting others..."

"...but it won't affect me personally"

Interestingly, something I've discussed numerous times is why nobody talks about climate change. The final two bars below show most people, despite their own awareness, feel others aren't talking about it.

Why do people think this won't affect them personally?

This is more than wishful thinking. It’s how our brains are wired to process risk - or, more accurately, fail to process it. The things we fear the most are often the things we are least willing to accept. So we pretend. We keep living like the future won’t be worse than today, even as the evidence piles up that tomorrow might be a catastrophe.

Our brains lie to us.

You know that feeling when you’re driving and the gas light comes on, and instead of pulling over, you convince yourself you’ve got at least another 20 miles? That’s optimism bias. It’s the same thing that makes people assume they won’t get lung cancer even after smoking for 30 years. It’s why investors in 2007 thought the housing market would keep going up forever.

We believe disaster will happen to someone else. Because it’s easier that way. If we accept that it’s our lungs, our savings, our future on the line, then we might have to do something about it. And doing something is hard.

Then there’s normalcy bias - the quiet, insidious voice that says, "relax, everything will be fine." It’s why people stayed in their homes as Hurricane Katrina barreled toward New Orleans. It’s why financial analysts kept saying “this is fine” as banks collapsed in the first half of 2008. It’s why people, deep down, still believe that industrial civilization will keep humming along forever.

But history doesn’t work that way. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall. The problem is, when you’re inside one, the fall looks like just another Tuesday - until it doesn’t.

Our threat reaction is also held back by temporal discounting - our built-in resistance to caring about anything that isn’t happening right now. If a tiger jumps at you, you’ll react instantly. If the climate is slowly increasing the risk of a breadbasket collapse, your brain shrugs. That’s a problem. Because the risks that will ruin us - the real existential ones - are slow, creeping, and almost invisible until they aren’t.

Let's revisit that last graphic:

If you’ve ever been in a meeting where everyone knew a bad idea was being approved but no one spoke up, you’ve seen pluralistic ignorance in action. We look around and think, Well, nobody else seems worried. Maybe I’m overreacting. Meanwhile, everyone else is thinking the same thing.

This happens at every level of society. Financial bubbles. Public health disasters. Climate change. Everyone assumes someone else has it under control. Governments, corporations, "the experts." And they don't see others panicking - or even talking about it - so they convince themselves it's not an issue.

You've probably seen videos where a crowd gathers to gawk at the aftermath of an accident but nobody calls 911. This is the bystander effect. The more people who see a crisis, the less any one person feels responsible. Surely someone else will do something! And yet, more often than not, nobody does anything at all.

That’s how civilizations collapse - not in one great explosion, but in a million tiny moments where people assume someone else will act or that it's someone else's problem.

Slow. Motion. Disasters.

A hurricane, an earthquake, a fire - you can see those disasters. Your body reacts. You run, you hide, you fight. Your brain knows what to do. But a financial system unraveling over years? An ecosystem slowly dying? A civilization eating itself alive? These don’t feel like emergencies. They feel like background noise.

That’s why we ignore climate change until our town floods. That’s why we shrug at economic warnings until our paycheck doesn’t come. That’s why we assume the system will hold - until it doesn’t.

Our ancestors evolved to dodge saber-toothed tigers, not slow-moving existential threats. That’s why we see the cracks forming, but we keep walking like the ground won’t open up beneath us.

Every catastrophe in history had its prophets. The 2008 financial crash? People saw it coming years before. The warnings were there. The numbers didn’t lie. But the system was making money, so nobody wanted to stop the party and instead laughed at the Cassandras.

Smoking and lung cancer? Scientists knew the link in the 1950s. But the tobacco industry ran ads with doctors smoking Camels, and people believed what they wanted to believe.

COVID-19? We watched it explode in China, and half the world still acted like it was a distant problem. Governments stalled. People refused to change their routines. We waited until it was already everywhere.

Climate change? The warnings go back over a century. We had our chances. We still can mitigate some of the damage if we make wholesale changes. But we probably won't.

So How Do You Wake Someone Up?

You don’t do it by yelling. You don’t do it by dumping data on them. You do it by making the risk real to them, personally.

Talk to their values. People don’t change their minds because of facts. They change when something aligns with what they already care about. A conservative won’t care about carbon emissions, but they might care about national security or their home’s property value. Use that.

Use stories, not statistics. A melting glacier is just a news headline. But one family losing their home to a flood? That’s real. That’s something people feel.

Show the impact right now. Don’t say, this will be bad in 50 years. Say, this is costing you money today. This is making your life harder already.

The future is too abstract. People need to see it happening now.