Imagine you are confronted with a choice; either you get 100€ now or 110€ in four weeks. What would you choose?

If you participated in a psychological study of Roelofsma and Keren (1995) this might have been the situation you were in. 82% of participants selected the instant payment.

This shows us something we experience in our every day lives. The longer we have to wait for a payment the less we value it. But what does this have to do with global warming? Let's generalize a bit.

If money that we receive later has a lower perceived value, then we might conclude that the further away future seems less important. Who cares that the cellphone in my pocket might at some point in the future cause cancer while I just hit my head painfully against the lamp that is now dangling in front of me? Problems we are facing at the moment cause bigger distress than the ones we might encounter in several years. Even though those in several years might have by far greater and more dangerous consequences than the ones we are facing right now.

And now there is a clear analogy: We already know about climate change. It will be difficult to find someone who is surprised by the fact that his car produces CO2. But it might be even more difficult to find someone who has stopped driving it because of that fact. Even worse: Another study showed that even IF people adapt a certain behaviour that has a positive (or less negative) effect on global warming they only say to do so if it is absolutely impossible to give other reasons (e.g. recycling). Buying organic food is more often attributed to concern about the own health and the use of energy saving lamps seems to be attractive because it causes lower costs. 

I don't want to say nobody is doing anything against the thread of global warming. As it becomes a more apparent problem more voices are heard that face it. On the 21st of September wake up calls were organized all over the world to show that we started taking action and we do not want to destruct ourselves. Here a nice video of this global event.

Still I think that we are not done there. Why weren't we allowed to take the train to the THINK ABOUT IT launch event, even if we specifically asked for it?* Why was meat the most chosen option at the dinner? 

So what do we have to do? In my point of view there are three options; We put loads and loads of effort into techniques that are positive for the climate and yet do not take away our comfort. (i.e. there is a lot of ongoing research on rearing cows that produce less methane.) Also could we wait for the first catastrophes to arise in front of our doors, so that the climate change problem becomes a more apparent and less futuristic one. ("Oops, we did that??) Not a good choice though. Mind the famous point of no return.

Yet there is a third possibility. We finally do something against global warming. And by that I do not only mean screaming to the politicians (of course this is also absolutely essential). There are options on a personal level; we can leave our cars parked, we use water more carefully, we buy regional food that doesn't need to travel by plane. We try to avoid planes for that matter. Instead of investing money and resources in research on methane free cows, we just reduce our consumption of meat, or even better: We stop eating it. There are a lot of things that a person can and should do.

If you want to know more about your carbon production and what you can do in order to reduce it I can recommend CO2 calculators like for example this one. 

As I said, the attitude to fight against climate change is there. But it's time to activate it! 

*The problem was the travel agency. TH!NK ABOUT IT or the EJC are as far as I know not to blame.