Does Climate Change Denial Amount to
An Evolutionary Pyschopathology?

   The threat of climate catastrophe elicits a curous social response: the stronger the evidence grows, the more the public listens to the professional deniers and climate skeptics.

   In recent months the tide of public opinion has turned, according to the New York Times and other sources.  Nearly half the American public no longer believe in global warming, according to a Harris poll. In just the last two years, the New York Times reports, belief in the basics of warming, such as the effects of greenhouse gases, has eroded by 30 percentage points.  Faced with stark choices, a growing number of Americans are ready to bet the house that the science is wrong.  

   Where have we seen this kind of reckless denial before? Hmmm...  Let's see: A refusal to face the facts, an angry dismissal of those who try to point out the dangers, and a euphoric embrace of risky behavior. Got it! You can spot this kind of behavior among the feverish losers in just about any casino. 

  Writing in Psychology Today, evolutionary psychologist Nando Pelusi argues that among our ancestors were many reckless gamblers whose luck was in. The even greater number whose "bets" didn't pay off didn't get to leave descendents. 

  "For most of human prehistory," Pelusi writes," living through the night was not a given. ... Those who continuously gambled and won became our forebearers, passing on a taste for the 'off chance.' The possibility that a big score could be just around the corner, but you never know where or when you'll hit on it, parallels modern gambling: One more rock overturned and you find dinner."

  It's not hard to see how the evolutionary penchant for risk-taking benefits us all: investment, innovation, exploration -- all of those can be laid to ancestral risk-taking. Once luck goes against us, however,  the  pathological Mr Hyde in us comes out.

  "When you start losing, the darker side ... asserts itself," Pelusi writes. "'One more roll and I'll recoup my money' becomes a formula for huge losses. No one is exempt. Remember the Barings Bank fiasco, in which the Rolls Royce of British banking was felled by a lone trader who kept making bad bets on derivatives, desperate to dig himself out of a hole? His gut overrode his training. We're all vulnerable to this risk instinct...."

   So here's our Barings Bank scenario:  starting in the late 19th century we bet our prosperity on a petroleum economy. For awhile we ran the tables. Now, our luck has turned. But instead of cutting our losses, we want to double down. 

   To be more precise, the cost of doing something about climate change is palpable, the benefit uncertain, and the alternative murky. Investing in global warming mitigation means admitting that we've been doing something wrong. That makes betting on murkiness kind of attractive. But it's surely a ten-thousand-to-one long shot.

   If rain shifts from croplands to deserts, how long will it be until the deserts become arable? If the snowpacks disappear from the Rockies, how long will it be until California is parched? And if the seas rise and inundate Bangladesh and other low-lying areas, how long will it be before millions of displaced and starving people touch off war?

   As Richard Dawkins has observed, there are many more ways of being dead than there are of being alive. Staying alive surely requires taking risks, but we don't have to give into the gambler's fallacy. As many  a gambler in Vegas has learned, "one more roll" often leads to a one-way bus ticket out of town. 

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