… Humans aren’t well wired to act on complex statistical risks. We care a lot more about the tangible present than the distant future. Many of us do that to the extreme — what behavioral scientists call hyperbolic discounting — which makes it particularly hard to grapple with something like climate change, where the biggest dangers are yet to come. …
The arrival of extreme events — hurricanes, wildfires, drought and torrential deluges — is not proof to many people that scientists are right and that a complete rethinking of climate policy is overdue. Instead, voters see these shocks more as evidence that things are out of whack. Change is needed, and voters deliver that verdict not by reevaluating policy but by casting politicians out of office.
Political scientists call such decision-making retrospective voting, and it too is rooted in how the brain deals with complex topics. CONT.
David G. Victor, Nick Obradovich & Dillon Amaya, Los Angeles Times