When facing the multifaceted issue of climate change, our emotional responses can become quite complex. This complexity comes from the fact that, in many ways, each of us contributes to the problem we’re trying to solve.
Take fossil fuel for example. Hating fossil fuels is easy, but it’s not easy to hate everything they’ve done for us. Fossil fuels have played a pivotal role in advancing humanity, providing essential security and significantly boosting our productivity to sustain and support our growing population. Fossil fuels have been instrumental in meeting our basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.
Our reliance on them has been both a boon and a bane, and this can lead to conflicting feelings about their role in our lives. We must accept our own responsibility in this crisis and the fact that we are also addicted to fossil fuels. But if we try to think about how awesome life is because of fossil fuels, and at the same time, how awful our lives will be if we continue to use them, we might end up filled with guilt or shame. Worse, this cognitive dissonance might lead us to inaction, causing us to shut down and believe that trying to change things is futile.
These inconsistencies are not hypocritical. They are intentions that we are struggling to negotiate. It is best understood as a strategy by which we defend ourselves against our anxiety, internal dilemmas, and tangle of conflicting needs. This is called ambivalence.
We can have feelings, attitudes, and beliefs that are in tension with each other. We are literally pulled in two opposite directions. When we have conflicts that feel irreconcilable, often, as humans, we use psychological strategies to manage this. They are our defense mechanisms. We all do it. Not only as individuals but also socially all the time. These defense mechanisms of denial, disavowal, and rationalization can sometimes be highly useful to make sense of these ambivalent, contradictory thoughts.
To work through ambivalence, it’s helpful to engage in reflective practices that encourage a deeper understanding of our feelings and motivations. Here are some strategies and questions to consider: