Clive Hamilton is the author of Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change amongst many other works. He spoke to NLP’s Alex Doherty on accepting the reality of catastrophic climate change and how humanity can adapt to a harsher future.

At the start of your book you describe the severity of the threat of man-made climate change. How would you summarise the status of the threat as it currently stands?

According to the climate scientists we have been so tardy in our response to burgeoning greenhouse gas emissions that there are now only two possible paths—extreme rates of emission reductions or extreme climate change. Achieving the first would require all of the major polluting nations to undertake the type of radical economic restructuring previously seen only in war-time. And it must begin within the next five years.

That is simply not going to happen; the world’s resolve to tackle climate change is going backwards if anything. So, unless the climate science turns out to be wholly wrong, we are locked on a path of extreme climate change.

Even a very optimistic set of assumptions about when global emissions will reach a peak and the rate of subsequent decline will see the world warm by around 4°C by the 2070s. That will make the Earth hotter than at any time for 15 million years, and of course the temperature will not stabilize at that level because feedback effects will have taken control of the Earth’s climate wholly out of our hands.

It is for these reasons that knowledgeable people are now talking about an “existential”  threat, and asking whether humanity will survive. This is no longer idle chatter among green millenarians.

You argue that the world is in the grip of what you describe as “growth fetishism”.

One obvious line of objection to the blind pursuit of economic growth is the destructive effects of such growth on the environment. However, some would argue that it is possible to achieve forms of sustainable economic growth. Isn’t this possible?

The problem we face is that the gains we derive from technological advance are constantly fighting the resource demands and pollution generated by the sheer expansion of the system. Technology can do a lot—some developing countries have skipped the copper wire phase and gone straight to mass communication using mobile phones. But however you cut it, it is impossible to imagine, say, half of the world’s population by 2050 enjoying the current levels of material affluence of rich countries without severe environmental and resource constraints. We might have zero-carbon cars, but where is all of the steel going to come from? Remember too that by 2050 there will be an additional 3 billion people and, if current trends could continue, the affluent will be twice as rich. It just doesn’t compute.

Aside from the environment, what other problems are associated with growth fetishism, in your view?

The obsession with economic growth cedes enormous political power to the “wealth-creators”, that is, the corporations. They are seen to be the organizations that provide jobs and satisfy people’s desires. As long as we privilege growth above all else the political system will serve the needs of the “wealth creators”.

The flip-side of growth fetishism is consumerism, the manifestation at the level of the individual of acquisitiveness and materialism. By validating these characteristics, growth fetishism erodes community and promotes self-focus. The astonishing irony of this is that it is well-established that, above a certain threshold, higher incomes do not make people any happier. Moreover, it is well-known that materialistic people are less happy than others and more likely to suffer from psychological problems.

In short, the more we elevate financial capital as our indicator of welfare and status, the more we devalue social, cultural and natural capital.

What are some of the strategies that corporations, governments and individuals have adopted when attempting to deny the seriousness of the environmental situation?

Green consumerism is a favourite approach of governments and big polluters. The claim that we can solve environmental problems if only we all “do the right thing”  shifts responsibility from policy-makers and polluters onto the shoulders of individual consumers. It attempts to replace ballot box behaviour with supermarket behaviour. But we will never consumer our way out of the climate crisis.

The fact that green consumerism is ineffective does not mean that people do not care about the environment. It is quite consistent not to buy green power as an individual but vote for a government that promises to force everyone to buy green power. We happily pay our taxes because we know everyone else has to pay too.

Apart from those who simply refuse to believe what climate scientists are saying (and make up reasons to explain why thousands of scientists would lie, cheat and mislead), most people deploy various devices to blunt the unpleasant emotions that follow from facing up to the science (see this paper [PDF]). They include distancing, distraction, wishful thinking, pleasure-seeking and blame-shifting. Humans are skilled at creating benign fictions, but when they turn into delusions that prevent us acting in our interests we are in trouble.

You argue that environmental destruction has flowed from the development of the mechanistic philosophy that appeared in the 17th century. This philosophy has often been regarded as tied to enlightenment thought and values, themselves a foundation for progressive politics. Why, then, do you object to this philosophy?

The mechanical philosophy evolved in the 17th century and became the worldview of modern science. But it went much further than simply enabling a new and powerful way of understanding the physical world. It introduced a dramatically different way of conceiving of the natural world and the relationship of humans to it. By rendering the world “dead” it created a radical divide between humans and the non-human world, and an attitude in which humans with their intellect could conquer all with their knowledge. Human welfare was separated from the welfare of Nature, with Nature being merely the means of improving human well-being.

It is apparent that this attitude lies at the root of the climate crisis. The success of the mechanical way of thinking was a precondition for unrestrained exploitation of the natural world, because the emerging ethos of capitalism overcame the obstacles to exploitation of the earth embedded in the earlier conception that humans are somehow organically linked to the natural world. Under the previous form of consciousness, miners performed propitiatory rituals seeking permission before cutting into Mother Earth. Once the respectful attitude reflected in this “superstition” had been swept away capitalist enterprise could spread far and wide.

You argue that long term survival for the human race may depend upon what you describe as “Metapersonal self-construal”. What do you mean by that term? Can you give concrete advice on how we can make the transition to such a radically different state of being?

We naturally think of ourselves as isolated egos existing inside our bodies, radically separated from the outside world. But this way of conceiving of ourselves is very modern and uniquely Western. Psychologists have distinguished between a conception of self that emphasizes one’s own uniqueness and separation from others (known as “independent self-construal”) and one in which the self is defined in connection with others, with the emphasis on belonging, duty and status (known as “interdependent self-construal”). The former is characteristic of Western individualist society and the latter of Asian and some Latin American societies, although the spread of consumerism is causing a shift to greater independent self-construal everywhere.

These two types of self-construal are anthropocentric. Researchers have identified a third type, metapersonal self-construal, where the self is conceived as inseparably connected to all living things or some wider notion of the Earth. It is found in all cultures but is especially prevalent in those influenced by Buddhism. Environmentalism is often concerned with cultivating a metapersonal self-construal, against the tide of individualism that forms the core conception of, for example, modern economics. Government and NGO campaigns that appeal to self-interest for environmental protection presuppose and reinforce an independent sense of self.

The rise of environmentalism is a sign that many people, even in highly individualistic societies, maintain a sense of connection to the natural world and do not see it solely as a repository of resources for human benefit. This should be drawn out more. One simple means of cultivating it is to spend time in the wilderness, although “nature” experiences are not without their contradictions.

You say that it is important for people to acknowledge and grieve over the destruction of the biosphere. Why is grieving important?

The more I thought about it, the more it struck me that facing up to the scientific warnings means accepting that we will lose something that is fundamental yet which we rarely think about—our conception of the future. For most people, the future is a somewhat improved version of the present. When we understand that the future will be radically different and much less amenable to a comfortable life we suffer a loss. So facing up to the scientists’ warnings means confronting death—our own, our children’s, other species’ and comfortable notions of progress.

It can be an emotional shock to accept this, and has been called the “Oh shit” moment. The emotions one experiences have to be dealt with and understood and the literature on grief is helpful in this regard.

You suggest that the age of secular humanism may be coming to an end and that religion will make something of a comeback in the future. Why do you believe that? What kinds of religious faith do you expect to flourish in this post-secular age?

Although we in the West like to think of ourselves as governed by reason, I think we have much more in common with our ancestors than we care to admit. After all, our failure to respond to the enormous threat to the future posed by climate disruption shows that the effect of the Enlightenment was only skin deep and we have at our disposal a storehouse of subtle mechanisms to exclude or filter the facts when they are uncomfortable.

Scholars have found that archaic societies faced with catastrophe often recall the supreme god or creator god. As societies mature, the supreme god tends to recede into the background, replaced with lesser gods such as those representing fertility, money and creativity. So I think that as the climate disruption arrives, and our notions of progress and a secure future unravel, humans may naturally return to contemplation of the big metaphysical questions of origins and ends and of meaning—the meaning of individual lives and the place of humans in the cosmos. This will be helpful because it is an antidote to hubris and despair. However, we can also expect fear to manifest in the growth of dogmatic religions, which are never helpful.

Clive Hamilton is Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics, based at the Australian National University (http://www.clivehamilton.net.au).

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (£14.99) published this month by Earthscan. It is available from http://www.earthscan.co.uk/requiem