Climate change as a common threat. Cognitive and emotional aspects of a lack of perception

Abstract

This contribution proposes a discussion on the anthropological factors - emotional and cognitive - that hinder the adoption of suitable and effective responses to the threat that climate change poses to the present and especially future health and human condition. In other words, it reflects on what Amitav Ghosh has called the great blindness and which we could describe in terms of an inadequate perception of the radical threat to future generations that results in the omission of a duty to them. The reasons for this failure to recognise this lie not so much in the intrinsic characteristics of the threat - the certain but indeterminate nature of the long-term outcomes of the phenomenon, the enormity of the effects, etc. - but rather, on the one hand, in the fact that the threat is a threat to the future generations, and on the other hand, in the fact that it is a threat to the future generations. - but rather, on the one hand, in the emotional and cognitive distortions stemming from the costs (in terms of consumption and freedom) that combating climate change would force us to bear; on the other, in a difficulty in imagining realistic and comprehensive solutions to the problem that translates into denial.