Readers React: Why our brains may not be equipped to handle climate change

To the editor: The question, “Why aren’t we talking about climate change?” was addressed by environmental activist George Marshall in his book, “Don’t Even Think About It.” He says we not only don’t talk about climate change, we don’t even want to think about it. Whether we believe or not, we’ve erected a “meta silence” around the issue. (“Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. So why isn’t it getting more play in the election?” editorial, May 26)

“Climate change contains none of the clear signals that we require to mobilize our inbuilt sense of threat and it is remarkably and dangerously open to misinterpretation,” he writes. Psychologically, we’re not well equipped to think long-term.

The answer to our silence is not found in our differences, he says, “but in the things we share, our common psychology, our perception of risk, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe.”

More science is not needed; what we need is to think of how to fix the problem and the cost.

Farrah Hedayati, Fullerton

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To the editor: There will be more hope that your riveting editorial will inspire action when we frame “personal sacrifice” as “personal satisfaction.”

The only personal sacrifice I experience is living under the bombardment of our society’s addictive consumerism, driver of climate change. Fall in love with your own idea of how much “stuff” is enough for today.

Get satisfied, America.

Carol Holst, Glendale

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To the editor: Maybe the public would be less passive about climate change if you devoted more of your front page to our dire climate crisis rather than pieces about Trump.

Yes, we are “teetering on the edge of catastrophic change.” Please, start writing more about it and not on page A-16. Maybe the public would wake up.

Martha Stevens, Studio City

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