Editor:
In support of Bob Sandford’s thoughtful commentary in the Oct. 26 Outlook titled “war and warming are racing one another to see which will end the world first” on the tripartite, mutually supportive, threat of climate change, human wars and the resulting mass migrations, we should consider some other scientific findings of Yale University cognitive scientists who discovered the phenomenon of what they called cultural cognition.
The study, in the Journal of Risk Research titled “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus”, is by Dan Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith and Donald Brauman.
This is marked by the tendency of people to ignore or discredit fact-based global risks in light of their strong and overpowering personal group’s values. Putting the facts out there and making them easy for the layperson to understand – a masterful feat of Sandford’s work – and then expecting the reader to accept these facts and act on them appropriately and effectively, just doesn’t happen.
It doesn’t change minds already set in stone. Many of the disbelievers continue to maintain their self-induced blinders, make their uninformed opinions into “their facts”, and continue to believe – the falsehoods – what they want to believe. This disastrous situation is compounded by vote-hungry politicians who support these fact-less believers and by social media lobbyists, with obvious aspirations of political gain and control. These sites ’ authors know if you repeat a falsehood and repeat it, then repetition persuades better than argumentation.
These manipulators use keywords (loaded terms) that trigger the familiar emotional knee-jerk reactions, falsely claim that one opinion is as good as another and shout in an aggressive and confrontational manner to show you that they “really mean it”. This gives the believers in falsehoods a cultural home where they’re comfortable in their ignorance and where others who disagree are the enemy. Siloed in their isolation, it is difficult for issues of global significance to filter through the wall of self-induced ignorance.
Some Alberta politicians take this persuasive path. Consider those promoting an isolated, land-locked sovereign state of possessive individualists; those attacking the informed findings of scientific experts who set realistically necessary climate targets; those who put a halt to new renewable energy projects in this province; those who promote carbon capture instead of the required carbon elimination; those who attack the proven economic incentive of a carbon tax, and those who allow oil and gas companies to reduce their environmental liabilities while they offer them incentives if they will just do something to clean up their mess.
You know who they are since they won a majority in the last election. These people will never promote leadership in the movement to combat climate change threats identified by Sandford.
They are uninformed power-hungry vote followers who attempt to divert attention to fake wars with Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bashing and “pot boiling” intentionally creating diversionary controversies over an unnecessary provincial pension plan. They can never lead this province out of any global crisis since they are all about promoting cultural cognition-induced beliefs about individual initiatives, taking back Alberta and do-it-yourself local ineffective solutions.
Instead of “think globally and act locally”, these elitists, unfortunately, promote “deny globally and act locally” to the detriment of everyone in this province and country. I don’t know how they can be persuaded by Sandford’s cogent arguments, but I do know that the longer they control the agenda, influencing their followers, the more difficult it will be to get Albertans to understand the real risks.
Jim Gough,
Canmore
