“Natural” Disasters

This past week, as my boyfriend and I huddled together in our walk-in closet while hurricane Irma raged around our one-level duplex in the West coast of Florida, I was forced to confront firsthand what many believe are the devastating effects of climate change. With minimal damage and a weeklong power outage, we got through the unusually large storm safely, but many others were not nearly so lucky. Irma, as well as Harvey, and now hurricane Maria, has caused untold damage to the individuals and communities touched by the worst of the storms. While it cannot be said for sure that the relatively high severity and frequency of recent natural disasters is directly caused by humans affecting the environment, we know that average rises in temperatures caused by human activity (global warming) and more extreme temperatures (another effect of climate change) can cause more severe hurricanes as well as other natural disasters such as floods or droughts (“Rising”, n.d.). Right before the storm, as everyone in my state either bought supplies in bulk and boarded their windows or simply evacuated in preparation, my friend made a comment about “Mother Nature” ruining his plans. My boyfriend, an environmental science major, somewhat jokingly said, “Don’t blame Mother Nature, blame human nature.” He was referring to the speculation that the severe weather was a result of climate change, which is a result of human activity. I think this is an incredibly important, overlooked point. I had recently been criticizing media coverage of the impending storm, which portrayed a narrative of “humans vs nature”, for feeding into what is fundamentally a false dichotomy between the two that exists in our national consciousness. It is necessary to distinguish humans from the environment in order to talk about the complex relationship we have with it, but in reality humans rely on and interact with the environment to such a high degree that I think any border drawn between the two is entirely conceptual. Unnaturally severe “natural” disasters (as well as a plethora of other issues such as bad air quality or the disappearance of the polar ice caps) are a direct physical manifestation of human behavior. Thus, these disasters are a form of macro, societal self-harm, as opposed to the popular belief that they are metaphorical attacks in a battle between people and the environment. In order to stop harming and start helping our environment, there has to be a paradigm shift in the way people think about the environment and their own relationship with it.

Bandura’s theory of triadic reciprocal determinism, discussed in Lesson 4 commentary, provides a useful framework for understanding the relationship humans have with the environment in terms of climate change.There is both a “negative” and “positive” way one can look at climate change in terms of reciprocal determinism. For instance, personal factors like greed can lead to behaviors like over-exploiting coal (which is profitable) as opposed to instituting new, environmentally friendly technologies (which is expensive), which in turn affects the environment by causing things like extreme natural disasters. On the other hand, the extreme effects of natural disasters can lead to personal factors like concern or fear for human safety, which can be motivations for people to engage in more environmentally friendly behaviors like using clean energy, which in turn helps the environment. So how do we encourage the latter, and discourage harmful personal factors and behaviors? Antecedent strategies, which focus on issues that precede a given behavior (i.e, harming the environment) (Schneider, et al. 2005), are, I think, more important in encouraging the latter scenario long-term than consequence (or after the fact) strategies, which are the equivalent of putting a band aid on a gunshot wound. Attempting to educate people about what behaviors hurt the environment is an important part of this strategy, but it is also wrong to assume that more information always correlates to better behaviors, as posited by the information-defecit model described in the text (Schneider, et al. 2005). If a personal factor is strong enough, it will likely outweigh information as a main motivating factor even if the information conflicts with the personal factor. For example, corporations will generally prioritize profit over mitigating environmental harm, as evidenced by the continued use of coal to power our society despite the existence of a growing number of viable alternative energy options. If we consider this using the four steps to promote environmentally friendly behaviors (Schneider, et al. 2005), we can hypothesize solutions to this problem.

I consider corporate greed and obsession with profitability to be a major cause in climate change. While trying to reduce your personal environmental footprint and education about how to do so are important and worthwhile, it is huge corporations and monopolies that cause the worst damage, because, well, they have the ability to do so. Massive scale use and distribution of environmentally harmful products/practices is the responsibility of corporations, which is why I argue that the strategy has to shift from emphasizing what the “average person” can do to mitigate environmental damage (which was the focus of environmental education when I was growing up and still seems to be) to finding out how to actually change the consumerist, profit-obsessed nature of society. While I am not examining a very specific behavior, I am examining specific personal factors that lead to a variety of harmful behaviors, which covers the first two steps of encouraging better environmental behavior outlined in the text (Schneider, et al. 2005) The next, most important (at least as far as applied social psychology is concerned) step is implementing an intervention. Undoubtedly, this is no small task when taking on such a deeply ingrained and widespread problem. How can the longstanding behavior of powerful, rich corporations, reinforced by profit, be changed? The government has some amount of regulatory power, and in theory, the government represents the public. Citizens also affect the success of large businesses more directly, by consuming whatever they may be producing. Both of these things mean that the power is truly in the hands of the people–it’s just a matter of realizing that and uniting to utilize it. Easier said than done, yes, but that is why an intervention implementation would consist of informing people of their power through education and various forms of media, and, to motivate them to utilize it, changing the “human vs nature” narrative. Instead of “What will happen to the Earth [if we don’t pressure corporations to act better]?” emphasize “What will happen to us?” Normally inducing fear is not a good way to enact change, but in this case a sense of urgency needs to be conveyed, and fear is a strong motivator–maybe the strongest. The Earth will be fine in the long run; it is humans that are in danger of no longer being able to live here. My intervention hypothesis could be summed up as: If people are encouraged to think about behaviors that are harmful to the environment as behaviors that are harmful to themselves, they will act with more urgency to eliminate such behaviors through pressuring politicians and corporations to change harmful environmental practices.

References

“The Rising Cost of Natural Hazards.” NASA.gov, NASA, n.d.      earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php.

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2005). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications

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