I continue my series on reasons why so many of us say that the environment is important but fail to show much evidence for it in the way we live, writes Henry Haslam.
This is a difficult column for me, because it covers a subject on which I disagree with my environmentalist friends.
I am in full agreement that we should stop burning fossil fuels: burning them is destructive and wasteful, as well as being dirty and polluting.
This is recognised by governments and industry worldwide.
However, I am opposed to the scare tactics involved in the climate-change campaign, as directed at the general public.
The climate-change message is part politics and part science.
In politics, it speaks to the minority who are predisposed to agree.
To others, the catastrophic predictions sound exaggerated and are best ignored.
Scientists recognise that there are facts and reasoning that oppose what they are saying, and they take the strongest arguments seriously.
In my book, The Earth and Us, I devoted a whole chapter to discussing why readers might disagree with me.
Climate campaigners, in contrast, select only facts that help their cause, and they don't engage with contrary evidence and argument.
This is bad scientific practice.
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Good advocates express their case in a way that relates to the hearers' own experience and understanding, enabling them to take the argument and make it their own.
Climate campaigners prefer to say, 'Trust us: we know'.
It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that many people are unconvinced by the scare and don’t take environmental issues into account in how they live.
Indeed, a multinational survey in 2024 found that although doom and gloom were effective for driving social media, it was ineffective for motivating action in people’s lives.
People exposed to catastrophic campaigning were less likely to change their behaviour than those who read nothing at all.
There's one group who take to heart the predictions of catastrophe: there are too many young people who suffer from eco-anxiety.
It is surely inexcusable to mount a scare campaign that damages the mental health of children and young people.
It’s unnecessary, too.
There is an alternative message that we environmentalists can give: to inspire young people (and the not-so-young) with a vision of living in harmony with the natural world, living in ways that enable people and nature to flourish together, living with the future in mind.
If the environmental movement is to be successful, it must be a grassroots movement with mass public support.
It should be convincing, morally and intellectually.
It should be positive.
