The problem is not runaway climate change. The problem is us.

Abstract

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Enlightenment belief in the fundamental rationality of human behaviour continues to influence responses to the looming threat of ecocide, encouraging denial and hindering effective action. The reasons for our stubborn resistance to changing self-destructive ways of life, however, are many and complex, and go well beyond cognitive dissonance or any common political and economic explanations. Nor is the answer to be found in human history alone. The driving forces underlying that resistance, I suggest, originate far back in evolutionary time to the impulses governing all sentient creatures.