VEDANTAM: ... You've actually called climate change, in some ways, sort of a perfect storm of the ways in which our minds are not equipped to deal with certain kinds of threats.
KAHNEMAN: I mean, it's really - if you were to design a problem that the mind is not equipped to deal with, you know, climate change would fit the bill. It's distance. It's abstract. It's contested. And it doesn't make - it doesn't take much. If it's contested, it's 50/50, you know, for many people immediately. You know, you don't ask, what do most scientists do? Which side of the National Academy of Sciences - that's not the way it works. You know, some people say this, other people say that. And if I don't want to believe in it, I don't have to believe in it.
So it's - I'm really - well, I'm pessimistic in general. But I'm pessimistic in particular about the ability of democracies to deal with a threat like that effectively. If there were a comet hurtling down toward us - you know, an event that would be predictable - within a day, we'd mobilize. So it's not even that it's distant in time. If it was going to affect our children, we'd mobilize. But this is too abstract, possible, contested. It's very different. We can't - we're not doing it, in fact.
So the only way would be to create social pressure. So, for me, it would be a milestone if you manage to take influential evangelists, preachers, to adopt the idea of global warming and to preach it. That would change things. It's not going to happen by presenting more evidence. That, I think, is clear.
