About Ignorance: Our Current Response to Important News

About Ignorance: Our Current Response to Important News

Have you ever decided to ignore a topic you thought was uncomfortable? Have you ever decided to not take part in rallies or other forms of protest and awareness because you believed you were the only person around you who cared about the issue? Many people do this. It is an obstacle to many awareness organizations, there is a lack of action and information surrounding many issues partly due to misinformation spread by social media or the human repose to ignore things that make us uncomfortable and side with things that have our same viewpoints. The topic I will be focusing on in this blog is climate change and the awareness around it, specifically in the United States.

How many people are worried about climate change? Well, according to an article by the news site AP-NORC “Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that climate change is happening, 11% don’t think it’s happening, and 18% aren’t sure.” (“More Americans”). They use information from a poll conducted in 2022. On top of that, while many people do believe that climate change is an issue caused by human activity there are still many that think it isn’t.

So, it is obvious that there are people out there that either think that climate change doesn’t exist at all or that the affects we are seeing are entirely caused by nature and not human intervention. How does this happen? There are many explanations for this.

Ignorance

Many choose to ignore tough and hard to believe facts all of the time. Everyday we ignore the price tag on our favorite items or the deadline for the assignment we need to turn in because it stresses us out and it feels like an attack. People want to ignore the hard things in life and as people we are very against change in general. In an article posted by Grist, the author mentions, “For climate change, an issue that people understandably associate with bad news, this phenomenon presents a significant barrier to taking action. Even people who accept the science might be reluctant to learn new (and potentially helpful) information about the topic if it means having to confront the growing scope of the problem.” (Garcia). The phenomenon she is talking about is how most people are completely okay with ignoring potentially helpful or important information if it means that they don’t have to step out of their comfort zone.

This doesn’t stop at just purposely ignoring hard subjects, however. Sometimes even with a great amount of evidence of one option being right we will still doubt whether it is correct or not. The New York Times article “Knowledge, Ignorance, and Climate Change” calls this specific behavior “skeptical pressure” (Pinillos). It is why when talking to family members about issues that have plenty of research done on them, like vaccines, they will still respond with doubt. It is that “maybe not” response in our heads when faced with evidence. This becomes an issue for things like climate change because how do we find ways to convince people to act when their response to the evidence presented is “I’m not sure that’s true,”? It isn’t exactly ignorance, but a refusal to believe any evidence presented that hinders the action on climate change from both the people in our communities and our government officials.

What do we do about this? Well, the author of the article “Knowledge, Ignorance, and Climate Change” suggests validating people’s skepticism and concerns about climate change. It is in our nature to be skeptical and every time someone tells you to stop looking into something it only makes you believe it more. This is often how people get caught up in believing conspiracy theories. You have to let them know that it is okay to be skeptical of new information and tell them why the option presented makes logical sense.

Misinformation

Misinformation is everywhere. It is not uncommon to see the news freaking out about something that has been misrepresented or statistics that have been interpreted wrong. You see posts on social media all the time that lie or are incorrectly informed about a subject. This is why it is important to see where your information is coming from, who the audience might be, why the information is being shared, and what context it is being shared in. If a YouTube channel is sharing information in a fun manner, it is most likely that the main purpose of the video is to entertain the audience and not to correctly inform them.

The thing people tend to be the most uninformed about is other people’s opinions on certain topics. For example, opinions on climate change seem to be either extreme or non-existent. You only hear about climate change in debates or in rallies. It is not often that it comes up in everyday conversations. Many people see inaction as the normal thing for climate change and so that decide not to act on it themselves because no one around them does. This creates sort of a cycle, in the article “The sense of social influence: Pluralistic ignorance in climate change: Social factors play key roles in human behavior. individuals tend to underestimate how much others worry about climate change. this may inhibit them from taking collective climate action.” It states that, “Recalling the results from the public opinion studies in Europe, the USA, and China, it is likely that a vast majority of these public in fact want to make a greater effort to combat climate change but avoid doing so out of fear of deviating from a misperceived social norm. A distorted view of the public's lack of climate concerns and support for pro‐climate policies inhibits political action.” (Kjeldahl and Hendricks).

According to this article, many people want to act or at least believe that it is necessary, as also mentioned in the data provided by the AP-NORC poll, but still decide not to because they are misinformed about what the public opinion about it is in their area or in their friend group. People are scared about being seen as an outsider in their community. An easy way to avoid this would be to create community events about topics you need support in, like climate change, and get the conversation around it started. Make other people’s and your own opinion on important topics known.

In Conclusion

Ignorance and misinformation play a huge role in stopping action on climate change and hinder awareness and action on other important issues as well. We can try to combat this by making climate change a less scary topic to approach, including ways to actively help and solutions to current problems so that people can get involved and not see it as a subject to be avoided. Provide correct and up to date information for people to access and help people avoid the fall of “skeptical pressure” when providing them with said information. In-action is a huge issue but there are ways we can help and there are ways to combat the purposeful ignorance, actual lack of information, and the misinformation that has been spread about climate change in our communities.

Sources

Garcia, S. (2021, April 6). No news or bad news? many people choose ignorance over staying informed, study finds. Grist. https://grist.org/climate/no-news-or-bad-news-many-people-choose-ignorance-over-staying-informed-study-finds/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily.

Kjeldahl, E. M., & Hendricks, V. F. (2018, November). The sense of social influence: Pluralistic ignorance in climate change: Social factors play key roles in human behavior. individuals tend to underestimate how much others worry about climate change. this may inhibit them from taking collective climate action. EMBO reports. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6216292/

More Americans are pessimistic about the impact they can have on climate change compared with three years ago. - AP-NORC. AP. (2023, July 11). https://apnorc.org/projects/more-americans-are-pessimistic-about-the-impact-they-can-have-on-climate-change-compared-to-three-years-ago/

Pinillos, N. Á. (2018, November 26). Knowledge, ignorance and climate change. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/opinion/skepticism-philosophy-climate-change.html

Hello folks! Thank you for reading! This was done as an assignment for my English 102 class :)