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Social psychologist, Dan Gilbert, says people will not get excited and worried about global warming in the same way people have about global terrorism because of the way our minds have evolved over millions of years. In his essay for The Times, Gilbert suggests 4 reasons for this disparity:

• Global warming does not represent people attacking us and we have evolved to be incredibility interested in people.
• Global warming doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities in the same way transgressing social taboos will. As Gilbert says: “And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto.”
• Global warming is a long term threat and we have evolved to detect clear and present dangers.
• Rate of climate change is too slow for people to really notice and therefore care.

You might be wondering why in a business blog I’m talking about climate change and terrorism. Well, these same factors, which render people apathetic to global warming, also affect people in organisations with issues like knowledge loss resulting from a retiring, aging workforce, how outsourcing and automation will require 1st world nations to focus on right brain capabilities, and how increasing connectivity among people will require a new worldview encompassing complexity principles.

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Posted by: joitske at August 31, 2006 6:55 PM

Posted by: Stephanie West Allen at September 1, 2006 2:25 AM

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