It’s uncomfortable when a belief you have long held is contradicted by new facts. Even more so if an entire worldview comes under pressure from the evidence. Psychologists call it "cognitive dissonance" and it explains why it is so hard to change our minds even though we flatter ourselves that we base our opinions on the evidence.
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| The evidence linking bushfires to climate change is overwhelming. Credit: Nick Moir |
It’s not surprising that most people most of the time find ways to explain away or ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs. So we talk to those who agree with us, limit ourselves to media that confirms our biases, and attack those presenting contradictory evidence as somehow disreputable or purveyors of fake news.
As a person from the political left, when I decided to write a book about Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia, I found myself experiencing this cognitive dissonance. As I researched and wrote the book, Silent Invasion, my worldview underwent an upheaval.
I had to discard and replace many of the assumptions and biases I had developed since my teenage years. My beliefs about modern China, the role of the United States in the world, the US alliance, intelligence agencies, the functioning of democracy and national identity – all underwent dramatic change.
The attacks on me came thick and fast, mainly from my colleagues on the left, criticisms that often upset me. One prominent left-wing intellectual began a commentary on my book by asking how a "principled, progressive writer like Clive Hamilton" could write a book like Silent Invasion. As if deciding to remain baffled, he didn’t consider the obvious answer, spelled out over the book’s 100,000 words; that is, the evidence.
Instead, many on the left believed that for some inexplicable reason I had become an anti-Chinese racist. For them, my long record of anti-racism, the fact that Silent Invasion was launched by Chinese-Australians, and the fact that it is now being read widely in a Chinese translation, defy explanation and are best ignored.
Like everyone, through my life I have clung to beliefs well after they had been disproven by any cool assessment of the facts. But in the case of Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia, I decided to confront the facts head-on and take the pain. The pain was more than I anticipated. Apart from the vicious social media and the slanders from various public figures, I lost friends, including my most valued political supporter.
For over 20 years before turning my attention to China, most of my work, including five books, was focused on climate change. When in the mid-1990s I first began reading what the climate scientists were saying I could see the enormity of the implications. For many years only a handful of people were ready to face up to the facts. Even the major environment groups, much to my frustration, took years before they worked climate change into their established patterns of thinking.
Many people on the conservative side of politics have found the evidence from scientists too threatening for their worldviews to accommodate. The more environmentalists began to raise the alarm, the more resistant they became, because accepting the facts would mean conceding political ground to their mortal enemy. So they adopted various ways of downplaying, reframing or just denying the evidence.
The Prime Minister and Opposition leader continue their tours of bushfire-affected communities.
The Prime Minister and Opposition leader continue their tours of bushfire-affected communities.
The scientists continued to go about their work, which not only confirmed their earlier analysis but showed the situation was worse than they thought and the calamities initially anticipated for later decades were arriving much sooner.
Some conservatives constructed conspiracy theories to explain why so many of the world’s top scientists and eminent scientific bodies had concocted the story of climate change or seriously exaggerated its effects. Rejecting climate science had become a core political belief. It defined who they were.
Now, any conservative who begins to think the scientists might be right risks accusations of betrayal and a kind of excommunication. Few people have the stomach for that. However, to keep one’s self-respect, when the facts become overwhelming, anyone other than a pure ideologue must sooner or later confront them, despite the discomfort and pain.
The evidence that the catastrophic bushfires ravaging our country have been intensified by climate change is overwhelming, and consistent with everything climate scientists have been warning about for more than 20 years. Nothing is more important for the future of our country than to face up to the implications of what the climate scientists have been telling us, and to take far-reaching action.
So I am appealing to the many conservatives who have admired my "courage" for tackling the issue of Chinese Communist Party interference to reassess their beliefs about climate change. I can’t promise it will be easy to undo deeply held opinions and rearrange your worldview. It means conflict with your political confreres. You may lose friends.
But the reason for opening yourself up to the evidence could not be more compelling – doing our best to save what we value above all else, our country, and the future of our children.
*Clive Hamilton is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University.
Links
- East coast bushfires: 'a mongrel of a thing'
- Australia's struggle with smoke and fire should put nuclear power on the agenda
- The provenance of a prawn: how sustainable is your seafood?
- How I became a convert to hydrogen
- 'We're smoke refugees': Sydneysiders flee the city for a breath of fresh air'
- Climate is changing': Historical maps show it's getting hotter and drier
- Morrison's big failure is his lack of leadership on climate change
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