The “humanness” of nearsightedness

• How can we reconcile the variability of weather with that of climate?  How does our humanness restrict our thinking?

Climate change was observed by scientists as early as the 1930’s, it was not, however, accepted by the general public until as late as the 2000’s and much of the public still questions its validity. This lag between data collection and public education and understanding has harmed our chances of turning the problem around. Even when word spread we had a hard time believing in the severity of the problem, when “asked to name environmental problems facing the nation, most Americans would think of pollution of drinking water, local smog, or the destruction of tropical forests ahead of climate change” (185): all very visible threats. As humans we have a tendency to be nearsighted, to believe only what we see, we spend too much time waiting for physical evidence of issues rather than looking beyond and seeing the whole picture. The problem is that by the time we do notice it’s probably too late.Weather changes daily, and the seasons differ from year to year. This variation has made it very easy to reason for climate change’s nonexistence. Climate is the weather conditions that prevail in an area over a long period of time. People loosely predict weather for future months based on what they know of the area’s past climate patterns. Climate change is a change in this predictability, it is the shift of climate patterns in certain directions so that past predictions no longer apply. These changes, however, are not and were not immediately noticeable. The general public found climate change and global warming hard to believe, because they didn’t have any data except what they saw through their windows, and it’s hard to be concerned about the possibility of the world warming on the coldest day of a New England winter.

Eventually, the public did begin to see changes. In my home state of Maine the winters have been progressively colder, harsher and shorter. This is not something that I can safely say that I have seen in my two decades of living but something my grandparents can claim over seven decades. So yes, now we believe climate change is occurring, but now it has progressed so far that some of the effects are irreversible.

Our “humanness” leads us to believe only what’s in front of us. In terms of climate change, we based our views on the weather we saw when we walk outside our front doors, rather than the data scientists gathered about the overall climate. However, global warming, like many other environmental issues, cannot be observed from one window or one city. It is observed through the compilation of data from all places in the world. We have to listen to the scientists and professionals around us who have the big picture because our own views are biased. We have to be willing to believe what may not be right before our eyes, because if we wait until we do it could be too late.