Sometimes the magnitude of the environmental challenges facing us today seems overwhelming. So we traditionally examine the larger problem in fragmented details. We isolate one part of a huge complexity of issues and consider, for example, the decline in wild salmon populations, the dilemma of disposing of municipal garbage, the merits of banning cosmetic pesticides, the mechanics of efficient recycling, the task of building efficient cars, the best way of managing forests, the logistics of protecting our surroundings in parks, conservancies and agricultural land. These days, the list could go on and on. And each detail alone seems extremely complicated for anyone who has tried to solve any one of them.

But overshadowing every detailed environmental problem is a question that we dare not ask. What if industrialization itself, the very foundation of our material, economic and social existence, is not sustainable? What if we made a strategic mistake 250 years ago when we left a biologically based energy system and cultivated one based on fossil fuels – when we shifted from muscle power to machine power? The Industrial Revolution was literally revolutionary, exploding our capacity to produce, consume, and impact our environment. But what if this system, so beneficial to us and so ecologically disruptive, is not compatible with the natural laws and limits that we must respect if we are to live sustainably on our planet?

Such a question seems heretical given the incredible material wealth, comfort and technological ingenuity that industrialization has provided. Indeed, we can’t imagine our present world without such a high-powered system of production and distribution. Oil magnifies our human effort by a factor of 25,000 – one barrel contains the energy equivalent of 12 men labouring for one year. Fossil fuels account for most of our electricity and transportation, half our fertilizers, and all the incredible petro chemical products that amaze us – from plastics and tires to clothing and paint. Industrialization has so magnified human influence and control that it has enabled our population to burgeon from 700 million in 1750 to an astounding seven billion today.

But, has industrialization’s success been its failure? Is it the instrument that we are using to wreck our planet? Does it have key failings that make it fundamentally destructive and unsustainable? Thoughtful people are now asking this question. Derrick Jensen raises this issue in You Choose, an intense selection from a book of collected essays, Moral Ground. “Destroying the world is what this culture does. It’s what it has done from the beginning,” he writes. Our impact was once insignificantly small; it is now large enough to be causing structural and global ecological distress.

The failing, of course, is not with industrialization per se. It was not one of nature’s inventions, a quirk of evolution that suddenly found a new and novel adaptation. Like writing, money, morality and time, industrialization is our invention, our way of giving shape to the order, character, materials and surroundings we prefer. Because industrialization is an extension of ourselves, we use it as an instrument to design the world that we want. And herein, perhaps, lies the failing of industrialization – it amplifies our own failings.

Although we call ourselves homo sapiens, wise humans, we still have some learning to do. Our entire history as a species has been a wresting of survival from a natural world of adversities. Our habit has been combating our surroundings and competing with each other. We have, of course, cooperated with plants, animals and other people when this strategy has been advantageous to us. And we have profited considerably from this tactic.

But cooperation has not been industrialization’s strategy. It has mostly been a process of taking, making and using what we want with little regard for environmental consequences. And, when we have coupled industrialization with such an extreme variant as free-market capitalism, the result can be curiously destructive.

Naomi Oreskes explores just one of these examples in Merchants of Doubt, a book about the organized assault of corporate interests on the issue of anthropogenic climate change. The “debate”, she concludes, is not a debate at all. Her research as a science writer found that the scientific community reached supportive consensus for global warming as early as the 1950s. The “strategy of doubt mongering” was initiated by a few powerful industrialists whose economic interests would suffer from any measures taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The empires of profit-making they had built needed to preserve the status quo regardless of the consequences to humanity or the planet. The same obstructionist tactics were employed to suppress concern about the harmful effects of acid rain, DDT, chlorofluorocarbons (ozone depletion), plastics, gasoline additives, food dyes and smoking.

New knowledge that conflicts with an old way of doing things is always difficult to accept. This is the phase we are now entering as we gain new insights into the effects of industrialization on our civilization, our lives and our planet. We are expected to accept, as an act of faith, that mining and polluting, that oil pipelines and tanker traffic, that natural gas and methane wells, that proliferating garbage dumps and stripping the oceans of fish are inevitabilities. They aren’t. Industrialization is our servant, not our master. We invented it so we can change it to suit the wellbeing of ourselves and our life-supporting ecosystems.

We can’t reverse history – we can’t undo what has been done. But we can reshape ourselves, our values, our expectations and our industries. We can make ourselves more aware and responsible, thereby changing what we do and, therefore, our future. Perhaps if we steeled our resolve, thought hard enough and plotted a more promising destination – perhaps if we did less drifting and more steering – we could create prospects for our children and grandchildren that would seem more promising.

Our human history has been a long process of taking greater control of the circumstances that affect us. Our early shelters and fires eased the inclemency of weather to make our living conditions more comfortable. Our agriculture replaced a dependence on wild plants and animals with the reliability of managed fields and pens where we could cultivate grains and rear cattle.

Indeed, the whole of human history has been a process of wresting control from the vagaries of nature. Writing eliminated the past by capturing the present in a set of recorded symbols. The mysteries of life and death were illuminated by traditions of religion and philosophy. Labour was ameliorated by the use of animals and then by the ingenuity of engines powered by steam and oil. Electricity has illuminated the dark and energized innumerable conveniences. Modern buildings are models of regulated climate. Our cars, trains and planes have shrunk the obstacle of distance. Digital communication is eliminating the constraints of space and time. Amazing surgery and pharmaceuticals are alleviating illness, pain and suffering. If the shape of landscapes or the flows of rivers don’t suit our needs, then we change them. And if nature doesn’t provide the materials we want, we invent new ones.

All this is anthropogenesis, human created. And it should be a source of immense pride and satisfaction, for it marks us as a species of incredible capability and accomplishment.

Granted, we can’t control everything. The tectonic plates of our planet shift and heave with unpredictable impulse, sending us scurrying for safety and causing us huge ruin. The forces of weather buffet our security and shake our intentions. Insects, vermin and fungi eat our farmed crops. A biological army of bacteria and viruses attack our bodies, causing the misfortunes of sickness and death.

Yet, despite these unconquered adversities, we have done very well as a species. Our human population has burgeoned from a few straggling millions to many billions. Most of us live with abundance unimaginable a mere century ago.

Despite all these accomplishments, we still possess a curious blindness, a strange unawareness. While we have engineered significant portions of nature to suit our needs, we have yet to fully accept the responsibility that comes with this influence. Anthropogenesis is making us the de facto managers of our planet’s biosphere. This crucial portion of Earth’s ecology not only determines our own well-being but it governs the diversity of species, the level of seas, the purity of air and water, the prevalence of forests, the stability of soils, the abundance of minerals, and even the weather that generates climate. We have been so influential that archeologists have termed this eon of Earth’s history the Anthropocene. In short, we have changed from being passive recipients of nature’s bounty to engaged creators of nature’s character.

But we have not yet surmounted our old habit of being victims or accepted our new role as custodians. We still retain the image of ourselves as noble beings struggling against great adversity, when we should now be thinking of ourselves as wise managers coordinating a system of vast complexity – just as pride is necessary to provide endurance for the oppressed, humility is necessary to provide guidance for the powerful. While we still think in the old and narrow paradigm of self-interest, we should now be thinking in the new and holistic paradigm of the entire planet.

This new obligation comes with an uncomfortable irony. The weight of our new responsibility encumbers us with duties unimagined in an age of powerlessness. A world-wide biological survey in 2008 reported that “half of all mammal populations are declining” and “a quarter of the 5,487 wild mammal species on the planet are threatened with extinction” (National Post, May 19/11). If the climate change we are inducing is dooming 35 percent of all plant and animal species to extinction by 2050, what burden of guilt should weigh upon us? British ecologist Chris Thomas notes the “sad possibility” that these predicted consequences of climate change by 2100 “may be modest, rather than excessive” (Ibid.). Even if the least destructive scenario comes to fruition, this marks the incredible success of our species as a stupendous calamity – a defining awareness that should revolutionize how we presently think and act.

In the history of Western civilization, a sea-change in consciousness occurred as we moved from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The God-centred servitude of the old centuries became the man-centred liberation of a new paradigm. Unshackled thought, expression and action created unimaginable innovation in everything from religion and politics to economics and technology. We began to steer our destiny as never before. We discovered our humanity and the merits of being humane.

We are now applying this process of discovery to our planet. Our understanding of its biological, chemical and geophysical mechanisms are exploding – just as we are disrupting and destroying them as never before in human history. These are the two faces of anthropogenesis. And they signal a time of crisis, a moment when our present paradigm is collapsing and a new one must be born.

Such transitions do not invite, they demand. They are non-negotiable. And they are dangerous. They can wreck us If they are blindly and foolishly denied, or they can rejuvenate us if they are wisely and bravely confronted. This moment in our human history is nothing less than critical.

Now that the 2011 winner of Lord Stanley’s Cup has been decided, the mania is subsiding, and Vancouver is beginning the arduous task of repairing the physical and psychological wreckage caused by the uncivilized riots that ravaged the city’s core, the time invites some reflection.

The fans in their ascending frenzy, abetted by an incessant barrage of media attention, seem to have forgotten that hockey is just a game, a contrived entertainment that is important only to itself. This perspective was already being lost when Vancouver’s Canucks beat San Jose’s Sharks in the semi-finals and the curve to hysteria was accelerating toward vertical. “The Canucks are gods!”, screamed one ecstatic fan over the din of the roaring crowds – a fit of fanatical enthusiasm failing to notice that after the Cup is won and lost, after all the expended energy and the hoarse cheering has subsided into empty space, the world will be essentially the same as before the games began. All the nervous mania, all the exhorting incantations, all the empowering charms and superstitious rituals will have changed nothing of significance. No matter the eventual victor, the world will still be facing exactly the same problems.

Well, not exactly the same. The Vancouver riots that were ignited by the 1994 quest for the Cup caused injuries to about 200 people and at least a million dollars in damage to the city. When the Vancouver Canucks eventually lost to the Boston Bruins in the seventh and last game of the recent finals, some of the energized fans exploded in a frenzy of destruction that was considerably worse. Burning cars, broken windows, looted stores, many injuries and at least one stabbing represent just the surface costs. Police will be expending thousands of hours examining a million photos and hundreds of videos taken of the mayhem by the media and public. Of the 100,000 people gathered in the downtown, as many as a thousand may be charged with offenses. Overloaded courts will be burdened even further. And a proud Canadian city, purporting to be modern and civilized, will be stigmatized worldwide for barbarism.

The world has been transformed in the 17 years since 1994. The digital age has turned the downtown of any city into the public square of the global village – to the growing chagrin of the Vancouver rioters, little now escapes everyone’s scrutiny.

But other fundamental changes are also occurring. People everywhere in the digital world are taking ownership of their circumstances. Just as the Arab Spring is sending tremors of uneasiness to dictatorships throughout the Middle East, the social condemnation of rioters by Vancouverites is invoking a new kind of justice. The morning after the 2011 riots, angry, disgusted and embarrassed citizens began feeding their documentation of crimes to police. Others came to the damaged centre of their city to sweep up broken glass, gather garbage, leave flowers, offer condolences and write apologies to the terrorized merchants. A new creation called “cybercitizens”, eager to restore their civic pride, began posting photos of perpetrators on websites. In response, guilty rioters were replying with emotional apologies for their misbehaviour. The corrective force of social shame was beginning to pulse through one small corner of the global village.

And so an answer is beginning to appear to the single plaintive question posed by a solitary young woman who was sitting on a curb in downtown Vancouver on the night of the 2011 riots. Amid the smoke and teargas, surrounded by fires, broken glass and looting, she was weeping inconsolably and asking over and over again, “Why do the Canucks always do this to us?”

The Canucks don’t do it to us. We do it to ourselves. We lose perspective. We forget that hockey is just a game. We forget that the contrived challenge of slipping a little black puck into a net is infinitesimally less important than the economic, social and environmental challenges facing our communities, our cities, our country and our planet. We forget that we have only one Earth. Indeed, when we lose this perspective, we burden ourselves with the absurdity of having to address all the problems resulting from such a lapse of judgment. The 2011 Vancouver riots, just like the 1994 riots, are a huge waste of society’s time, energy, resources and awareness. And now the public’s attention, once squandered on the hyped importance of Lord Stanley’s Cup, is now being distracted by the complexity of the consequences. In the sorry saga of human folly, waste seems to beget waste and absurdity seems to beget absurdity.

If the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup was supposed to be comic relief, we need to change our sense of humour. We have a planet in serious environmental trouble. We have a global financial system in near crisis. We have a burgeoning human population that needs sustenance and security. We have a collapsing ocean ecology that is an unfolding catastrophe. Global climate change is beginning to terrorize people and obliterate species. Repairing the wreckage initiated by the empty quest for a mere metal trophy is nothing more than a wasteful distraction.

If the people of Vancouver are willing to rise up in defence of their city, then perhaps the citizens of the global village will eventually rise up in defence of their planet. The two situations are analogous. Forget hockey. Like the 100,000 people gathered in downtown Vancouver on a June night in 2011, we are all complicit in the environmental riot wrecking the one and only Earth we share. It’s incumbent on each of us to do what we can to stop the destruction.

The strange behaviour of the sub-atomic world caused a few physicists to worry that we might be able to invent a particle collider powerful enough to generate a black hole of sufficient mass that it would drag our entire Earth over its “event horizon”, causing our planet to disappear. But calculations in 1999 deemed this impossible. In 2001, other calculations indicate the possibility. In 2003, the threat was once more dismissed because new calculations suggested any black hole we created would immediately vanish. But in 2008, during the construction of the incredibly powerful Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, a few physicists continued to warn of the possible danger. By 2010, the LHC was functioning near full power and, fortunately, our planet has not yet disappeared into a black hole.

One of the interesting discoveries resulting from this black hole issue – aside from not disappearing into one – was that we learned more about the psychological and sociological mechanisms of our decision making. This non-event created enough worry among a few physicists that social scientists were inspired to examine more carefully how we make decisions and how we may be deceived by a flawed thinking process which we believe to be logical and measured.

The subject also gains relevance every time the world is predicted to end, a non-event that happens frequently. The latest, scheduled by a fundamentalist Christian group in America, was for Saturday, May 21, 2011. If anyone missed it, the next end is due in 2012 when the Mayan calendar reaches its last recordable date. If end-of-the-world events have been not-occurring with historical regularity, why have the predictions been so inaccurate?

Social scientists have identified a number of misleading thought processes “that can skew attempts to reach objective assessments of risk,” notes an article in the New Scientist (May 20/10). “Cognitive dissonance”, for example, “describes the tendency of people to seek information that is consistent with their beliefs and to avoid information that is inconsistent.” “Groupthink”, a second process, describes how intelligent individuals, working in a group, can reach conclusions that are not justified by the facts. And “confirmation bias”, a third process, is our inclination to be optimistic, to select only the information that confirms the conclusions we want.

When these three processes are applied to the environmental risks surrounding us, we get some illuminating insights. Consider, for example, the variety of insidious toxins now infiltrating our land, water and air. These pollutants are created by the same admirable ingenuity that makes miracle products, generates vast wealth, and defines our technological civilization. If this technology is the culmination of who we are, but it is also poisoning us and our planet’s biological systems, the result for us is “cognitive dissonance”, a collision between the technology that defines us and the ecology essential to our existence. Since our image of ingenuity is difficult to abandon, our first impulse is to reduce the tension by denying the seriousness of the pollution.

“Groupthink” is a similarly dangerous process. If a group of like-minded people can be bonded together – think of tobacco corporations rallying pro-smokers to deny the unhealthy effects of cigarette use – then this group can be manipulated to blindly support an idea contrary to scientific evidence. The same dynamic of “groupthink” operates in “brand” marketing where emotional loyalty is cultivated and nourished by advertising. The fan base of professional sports teams is engineered by “groupthink” – the root of “fan”, incidentally, is an abbreviation of “fanatic”. And, arguably, our entire consumer culture functions as a giant “groupthink”, an unquestioning belief that our fulfilment is based on buying and owning – “I shop, therefore, I am.” Even though the evidence is that we don’t get any happier with ever-ascending levels of material possession, and that the ecology of our planet cannot continue to absorb the environmental impacts, we still embrace consumerism – willingly abetted by the corporate advertising that feeds “groupthink”.

The risks associated with “confirmation bias” express themselves in numerous ways. We want oil, so we believe that we can drill safely in ocean bottoms kilometres below the surface. We want jobs, so we believe that a new mine can operate without environmental damage. We want leisure, so we believe exotic vacations are mandatory. Corporations are particularly inclined to the error of “confirmation bias” primarily because their first objective is to convince both investors and the public of the profit and social merits of their projects. Note Enbridge and its pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, Compliance Energy and its proposal for coal mining in the Comox Valley, or Quinsam Coal and its desire to expand existing operations in a watershed already being compromised by its toxic run-off. Salmon farming uses the same strategy of touting its benefits while minimizing its ecological damage. Conflict invariably results when the “confirmation bias” employed by proponents to under estimate risks collides with those who want a realistic assessment.

And what is the end result of these misleading thought processes? We don’t know – yet. We haven’t reached the end of history. While the present rewards have been incredible technological, material and economic benefits, the optimism that we humans are actually making wise decisions is being shaken as we take stock of the global environmental costs.

The mounting impacts are ominous. And now, as we start the introspective process of examining the wisdom of our collective decisions, we are beginning to realize that the black hole that undoes us, instead of being subatomically small, may be as big as the way we think.

Moral Ground is a book of environmental essays that contains a chillingly poignant one by Derrick Jensen, “You Choose”, in which he has asked people a simple and fundamental question. “Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?”

Jensen’s question embodies the premise that we live on a finite planet which we have been using as a place of endless resources, with the result that our human population has burgeoned to a crowded 7 billion, we are displacing most other species from their habitats, and we are wrecking our life-sustaining ecosystems in the process. While some people may disagree with this premise, most now recognize the severity of the global environmental stresses we are causing and accept the validity of Jensen’s question. It was their answer that was chilling.

“I’ve asked that question of thousands of people,” writes Jensen, “and almost no one says yes. The answers range from no’s to derisive laughter.”

Jensen’s unscientific sampling is probably accurate – most people know of the problem and its severity, they just aren’t doing much to solve it. The famous British theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, said he expects we will “cook ourselves off the planet”. Roger Penrose, the Oxford physicist of comparable calibre, noted that, “We might destroy ourselves… by overheating of the Earth,” before we devise a theory explaining gravity (New Scientist, June 13/09).

Given this kind of assessment, anyone who is trying to raise awareness of this environmental threat to a level that inspires collective concern and action must be mystified by what people are thinking these days. A few worried people are desperate for some kind of corrective measures. But most people really don’t seem to comprehend the significance of the looming threat.

The paramount environmental threat, of course, is the entire issue of greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and climate change. It has not been adequately addressed by nearly three decades of United Nations’ negotiations. And the subject simply disappeared from consciousness during Canada’s recent federal election, as if a collective denial suppressed it or an orchestrated distraction lured attention from this critically important subject. If the feverish mania of hockey’s Stanley Cup finals had been directed to this issue of substance, perhaps the dark musings of Jensen, Hawking and Penrose wouldn’t seem so prophetic.

Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced that recovering economic activity has generated a record 30.6 gigatonnes of global greenhouse gas emissions for 2010, an amount 5 percent higher than the previous 2008 record. This is bad news for the pledge of the international community to hold the global temperature rise below 2.0°C, the threshold at which environmental conditions are likely to escalate from serious to dangerous. In addition to “more flooding, harsher storms, rising sea levels, species extinction and reduced food security,” notes Deutsche Welle, (May 31/11), we may also lose human control of the global warming agenda as ecosystems – such as the thawing of massive permafrost areas – move into unstoppable feedback loops. Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, called the agency’s greenhouse gas measure “another wake up call” (Ibid.).

“Another wake-up call.” We have been getting them for years, each issued with a little more urgency and desperation than the one before. But the inclination of our consciousness is invariably to hit the “snooze button” every time we’re dreaming of another entertaining distraction, every time we’re drifting out of the illusion of perpetual economic growth, every time we come closer to the environmental reality of our day.

With an ingenious blending of evasion and obstruction, we continue to subvert solutions by building the conditions for failure. The IEA’s 2011 report notes that , “The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2.0°C target is to be attained” (Ibid.) But, unfortunately, “80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions projected for 2020 are ‘locked in’ through existing or under-construction fossil fuel power plants” (Ibid.). Meanwhile, we continue to encourage fossil fuel exploration, thereby creating the ironical situation that every successful find of oil, coal, gas or methane subverts the urgent transition we must make toward a carbon-zero economy.

What we are thinking really is mysterious. Years of wake-up calls have not reduced greenhouse gas emissions – except for the Great Recession of 2008, global emissions have just continued to climb. And any time the damaging economic activity falters, governments rush to re-energize it.

No wonder Derrick Jensen’s poignant question, “Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?”, is met with a chorus of either “no’s” or “derisive laughter”. Well, we all understand “no”. But just what, we might ask ourselves, is the meaning of that laughter?

If a healthy biological ecology provides for the well-being of its plants and animals, then a healthy human ecology should provide for the well-being of its constituent members. But human societies are not inclined to be healthy. And a major problem is the inequitable distribution of wealth.

In most parts of the world during the last several decades, the separation between rich and poor has been increasing, the result of a pervasive economic philosophy that seems to have gripped even those countries once espousing economic egalitarianism such as Sweden and Canada. The same economic disparity is rising in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East as the number of billionaires soar, the ranks of the poor swell, and the stabilizing effect of the middle class – once the economic and cultural driver of socio-political ecosystems – continues to either stagnate or shrink.

The political justification for supporting the rise of the rich is the putative benefits of so-called “trickle down economics”. As the rich get richer, their investments should theoretically generate new business and commerce, creating widespread wealth as employment and prosperity percolate downward to lift the economic well-being of the entire society. But this does not seem to be happening, confirming John Kenneth Galbraith’s pejorative judgment of “trickle down economics” in America: “If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows.”

This growing separation of rich and poor has serious social, political and economic ramifications. (There are environmental implications, too, but that’s another subject.) In the Middle East, North Africa and China, income inequality is causing riots and protests. The rich can absorb the increasing cost of food and fuel but the poor cannot. The energy sparking the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain are closely linked to economic inequalities. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, has warned that this growing inequality is not only bad economics but it is a bad way of operating human societies. A United Nations study found that increasing economic disparity has a wide range of negative effects: people become more cynical, society polarizes, crime rates increase, levels of trust and security decline, everyone feels less confident, family stability suffers, health deteriorates, and life expectancy decreases. The United States, the country that has most vigorously adopted an unfettered free market philosophy, is experiencing precisely these symptoms.

In Canada, the American experiment is not so advanced. But the same symptoms are beginning to appear. The use of food banks hit a record in 2010. Even people with jobs are using them – while unemployment from the post-2008 recession has stabilized or fallen, a larger proportion of people have minimum income jobs that do not supply them with enough income for basic needs. Some people simply give up looking for work, disappear from statistics, and form an invisible social burden that Robin Somerville of the Centre for Spatial Economics calls “structural unemployment”. In this situation, he explains, “The numbers look better precisely because they’re worse” (Globe & Mail, May 6/11).

A analysis of Canadian income between 2000 and 2010 reveals that the wealth of the five economic classes increased as follows: the poorest by 8%, the lower middle by 13%, the middle by 13%, the upper middle by 17%, and the richest by 31%. The increase in wealth of the richest was approximately equal to the entire income of the lower middle class and twice the entire income of the poorest class.

These income disparities erode the viability of societies. Armies of the non consuming poor not only compound unemployment but they cost governments taxes from unpurchased goods and services. Low income people become burdens on the well-being of everyone. A recent study found that the average cost of a non-homeless person to stay in a Toronto hospital was $12,555; the cost for a homeless person was $15,114. A similar Calgary study found that the cost of providing supportive housing to a homeless person for one year was $34,000; the approximate cost of providing the same person with emergency shelter, emergency hospital care, law enforcement and other social services was $134,000 (Ibid.). Poverty, in other words, beyond the human suffering is represents, is expensive to society as a whole.

A Manitoba experiment in the 1970s attempted to discover what the effects would be of providing everyone in a few communities with a “set annual income”. The results were dramatic. People were “more likely to stay in school, out of emergency rooms and out of jail”. Their purchases contributed to the economy and they were “more likely to move eventually above the poverty line and pay taxes” (Ibid.). A little help from society reduces suffering and the investment creates wealth that benefits everyone – “trickle up economics” may be a far more effective cure for social and economic malaise than “trickle down economics”.

Human societies have evolved precisely because they have become progressively more sophisticated, supportive and compassionate. Furthermore, an expansive understanding of human societies suggests that most human problems are better addressed with co-operation than competition, with reward than punishment, with help than retribution. Such practical strategies become increasingly crucial as our current societies grow in size, diversity and complexity – and the environment that sustains us all becomes increasingly tenuous. Indeed, the evidence supports the conclusion that both human and natural ecologies benefit from enlarged systems of caring and sharing.

Doubt is the foundation of all science. Every scientific principle and theory, no matter how established and trusted, contains the acknowledged possibility of error. This is the way science works. It is always in the process of disproving, adjusting or refining itself. This legitimate doubt at the foundation of science makes it particularly prone to misunderstanding and vulnerable to the illegitimate doubt that is irrational, self-serving or ideological.

Industry is quite willing to exploit this doubt to protect its markets and profits. The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was set up in 1993 by Philip Morris to discredit the medical evidence linking smoking to cancer and other health problems. A 1990s coalition of US fossil-fuel-based corporations formed the credible-sounding Information Council on the Environment with the specific intent to “reposition climate change as a theory, not a fact” (New Scientist, May 15/11).

Coal, chemical, pharmaceutical and oil companies have followed this effective strategy by establishing similar organizations with equally authoritative-sounding names to debunk any science that doesn’t suit their interests. People who join such organizations usually find themselves in the dilemma of being supported and then duped and exploited. But everyone else is also psychologically and materially victimized. So, too, is the environment, as the strategies to protect it are subverted by self-serving interests. And truth, that nebulous but most valuable of commodities, is lost in the manufactured confusion.

The mechanics of creating unfounded doubt are fairly clearly understood:

• Allege or imply a conspiracy and argue that scientific consensus has arisen through collusion rather than evidence.
• Use fake or selected experts to support the doubt.
• Select only the evidence that reinforces the doubt. Continue advertising this evidence even after it has been discredited – a lie repeated often enough begins to sound true. Never mention the other overwhelming body of supportive evidence.
• Discredit the science by attacking the character of the scientists.
• Amplify the importance of a mistake. Focus on a trivial error to discredit a huge body of credible research and findings. 
• Create standards of certainty that science may not be able to meet. If those standard are met, then create others that are more stringent. Always keep alive the doubt.
• Use logical fallacies. For example, scientists collaborate on climate research and attend international meetings, therefore they have conspired together to make global warming a socialist conspiracy to undermine free-market capitalism.
• Exaggerate differences of opinion. Manufacture doubt by portraying scientists as so divided on details that they seem to disagree on basic principles. Propagate doubt and confusion by insisting that these minor differences be publicized. Insist that dissident and minority views, regardless of their credibility, receive a hearing equal to the scientific consensus.

When confusion reigns, people revert by default to their old patterns of behaviour. Instead of embracing new insights and ideas, they continue doing what they have been doing, whether this be buying the same products, consuming the same amounts of energy or inflicting the same damage on nature. Change is invited by some measure of certainty. Any justification for innovation is subverted by doubt.

Doubt can be manufactured by even more devious means, such as outright lying. In 2006, a conservative columnist in Australia, Piers Akerman, published a condemnation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by quoting its former chairperson, John Houghton, as saying, “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen” (Ibid.). The international press distributed the quote around the world, and Houghton’s statement became justification for discrediting the IPCC for sensationalizing and exaggerating the climate crisis. But Houghton had never said or written such a statement anywhere in his speeches or books.

In the manufacture of doubt, lies must seem credible. This single characteristic is enough to allow their propagation. Because people “use mental shortcuts” (Ibid.) to understand their surroundings and rarely check the veracity of quotes, such lies seem like they could be true, especially to people who are uneasy about the disturbing implications of scientific studies. Environmental subjects are particularly prone to this adverse reaction because they tend to strike at the foundational behaviour of our culture, inducing widespread worry, guilt and the need for corrective measures. The defensive and protective mechanisms of people then spread the lie until it reaches critical mass. Finally, the lie is believed simply because others believe it.

This is not mere quibbling. Our modern civilization is largely founded on principles that attempted to free “historical and scientific inquiry from dogma” (Ibid.). It is successful and viable to the extent that it places empirical truth above fanciful falsehood. And on a planet with profound and structural environmental problems, if we don’t have truth, we don’t have solutions.

As our circumstances move from serious to critical, we need a brave honesty if we are to identify these environmental problems and correct them. A subversive strategy of concocted deceit that spreads invented confusion is a strategy for delay and disaster. This is not a time for the debilitating effects of manufactured doubt.

The scientific community has been in a state of constrained panic during the last couple of years as the binding terms of the Kyoto Protocol approach expiry, as a replacement agreement to cut global greenhouse gases emission have foundered at international climate talks in Copenhagen and Cancun, and as the climate crisis continues to worsen. Because the doubts propagated by a few climate-change deniers seem to have been disproportionately effective in subverting corrective agreements and action, social scientists have been dissecting the dynamics of denial to understand what happened.

The inquiry has broadened from the refusal of a few people to accept evidence of climate change to the wider issue of how we humans confront new and disturbing information. The result could be called the psychology of denial. And, in the scientific tradition, the analysis is measured and rational, usually beginning with the distinction between skeptics and deniers.

Skeptics are inclined to examine claims one by one, weigh evidence carefully, attempt objectivity, and willingly follow where the facts lead. As personalities, they tend to be secure, open, adventurous and relatively immune to threat. Skepticism is normal and common, an essential attribute of adults, a guiding principle of science, and it tends to be the operating mechanism of people who are found on the “progressive” side of the political and ideological spectrum.

In contrast, deniers are inclined to weigh information with a “confirmation bias” that pre-judges on the basis of a tradition, intention or belief system. They change their minds more reluctantly than skeptics and tend to be closed, cautious and insecure outside the realm of the familiar. Deniers tends to be found on the more “conservative” side of the political and ideological spectrum. Generally, however, they are simply ordinary, well-intentioned people who are doing what they believe is right. But this is where the psychology gets more complicated.

Deniers tend to think of themselves “as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people” (New Scientist, May 15/10). They are most likely to be found in circumstances where “science must be taken on trust” (Ibid.). Thus deniers are usually associated with issues such as global climate change, evolution and tobacco use, and those issues in which the supportive evidence cannot be easily, immediately and tangibly demonstrated. For deniers, the trust issue gets entangled with their inclination to perceive scientists, doctors and technical experts as “arrogant and alien” (Ibid.). Perhaps this psychological dynamic is best illustrated by the 2009 comment of a Texan who was defending the teaching of creationism in schools because “…somebody’s got to stand up to the experts” (Ibid.).

Such a response is understandable in a world that is becoming more technical and complicated. People feel a loss of control. They want to reclaim the personal power that seems to be slipping away from them. A culture of individuality that has traditionally attempted to control the forces of nature can be expected to respond with frustration and anger when climate scientists argue that we are losing this struggle by unleashing forces beyond our abilities to manage. Deniers take this threat personally.

Deniers tend to be controllers. They also tend to have a larger than normal sense of their own importance and are inclined to be suspicious and intolerant of criticism and different opinions. While everyone needs some sense of control and self esteem in their lives, we all must concede to our limitations and dispensability. The world will not end with the loss of any one of us and we have no basis for believing that it should function according to our individual conception of it. Controllers don’t like to be controlled. Indeed, they may react perversely to any authoritative information.

Psychologists have also mentioned the “innumerate” problem, the inability of some people to grasp concepts such as probability. Not everyone who smokes gets cancer. Not every evolutionary change benefits the species. Although the average surface temperature on the planet is going up, climate change doesn’t mean that every place is going to get warmer. General trends cannot be deduced from isolated examples. Anecdotes and personal experience are coloured by subjectivity. The scientific method necessarily discredits such individual perception and helps to create the impression among deniers that scientists are elitists whose ideas diminish the importance of individuals and the validity of their awareness. So, in defense of their own experience, credibility and self-respect, deniers strike out against science, its theories and its practitioners. Regardless, denial is a common first response to things we didn’t want to happen.

Guilt is another important consideration that motivates deniers. Anthropogenic climate change means that we are all implicated in an unprecedented travesty against our planet’s ecology, the ultimate consequences of which are expected to be unimaginably disruptive and dire. The damage to our human reputation and dignity would be correspondingly disastrous. A squabbling, greedy, warring, destructive and irresponsible species is not the inescapable image we want to have of ourselves. Denial is a protective reflex against the discomfort of this censure and its ensuing guilt. If we can’t change the evidence inundating us, we can deny its validity by using complex and ingenious rationalizations.

So, what does the psychology of denial ultimately mean? Perhaps that we are a complex and ingenious species perfectly capable of undoing ourselves by our own complexity and ingenuity.