Apocalypse fatigue: Losing the public on climate change | Guardian
The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people. In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal they recruit to the cause.
via guardian.co.uk
Fascinating discussion from Yale Environment 360 in the Guardian of why, despite steadily increasing media coverage over the past 20 years and high profile "celebrity" endorsement by the likes of Al Gore, not many people really care about climate change.
I guess the same points would apply to the related issue of peak oil and the energy crisis, though it's by no means as widely discussed in the media -- although it will lead to similarly reduced standards of living among those of us addicted to fossil fuels.
