Scared straight: How prophets of doom might save the world
Greta Thunberg often paints the world as being in a dire position, stirring her followers into confronting the existential threat of climate change. Credit: Markus Schweizer. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Several years ago, a team of Australian researchers asked people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia about how probable a global catastrophe in the near term might be. They found that “a majority (54 percent) rated the risk of our way of life ending within the next 100 years at 50 percent or greater, and a quarter rated the risk of humans being wiped out at 50 percent or greater.” Another study that focused only on climate change found that “four in ten Americans think the odds that global warming will cause humans to become extinct are 50 percent or higher.” A search for “human extinction” via Google Ngram Viewer, which combs through digitized documents in Google’s collection, shows a significant leap in the term’s frequency over the past 20 years.
The Australian researchers also noted that, when confronted with end-of-the-world thoughts, people tend to have one of three responses: first, they interpret the situation through the prism of religion. On this view, the threat of catastrophe is seen as part of the grand battle between Good and Evil in the universe. Second, people come to believe that “the world’s future looks grim so we have to focus on looking after ourselves and those we love,” or in a “weaker” form, “we should enjoy the life we have now, and not worry about what might happen to the world in the future.” And third, people latch onto the idea that “we need to transform our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world.” The authors referred to these fundamentalism, nihilism, and activism, respectively.
