Record heat summers. Endless rains ravaging cities and villages. Droughts liquidating regional economies and family projects.
Hailstorms and off-season or off-course hurricanes have become no longer the exception but the rule.
There is no doubt that climate change has gone from being a speculative topic for scientists to becoming an everyday occurrence. What was not so clear is that Latin Americans are the people most concerned about the topic in the world.
A study by the global research network WIN, in association with the consultancy Market Analysis, reveals that seven out of ten Latin Americans are in full agreement that global warming is a serious threat to humanity.
Only a handful of Southeast Asian countries, often hit hard by floods and weather disasters, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia, are of greatest concern, but Latin America as a region displays an unparalleled degree of alertness.
In contrast, despite the abundance of information and recent tragedies, Europeans or North Americans seem less alarmed.
If such a broad consensus of public opinion were to serve to guide the actions of governments or their weighty institutions, our region would be expected to become the spokesperson and active agent in the climate negotiations and we would see clear leadership in a few months, when the The next UN Conference on Climate Change, COP-27, will be held in November in Egypt.
Will we see this in the near future?
Like so many other urgencies, from inflation to crime, from deteriorating education to the explosion of drug addiction, our societies are quick to air their concerns and slow or inconsistent in responding publicly and collectively to try to remedy.
It is not uncommon to explain these gaps by cultural deviations that tend to over-dramatize too many issues at the same time and rely on the transfer of responsibility to third parties.
In other cases, restrictions on civil liberties or rights that prevent demonstrations are frequent, as happened in dictatorships or during the harsh quarantines of 2020.
Interestingly, none of these alternatives help us understand the current picture.
In the case of the climate crisis, Latin Americans’ anxiety and sense of record emergency are counteracted by a paralyzing combo of inertial optimism, exaggerated individual self-responsibility, and excusing those with original resources and responsibilities for the factors that generated climate change.
The result: an environment of public opinion that leaves both observers and decision-makers perplexed and inert, discouraging the prospect of seeing any Latin American head of state leading some dramatic act in favor of emissions restrictions.
inertial optimism
The anguish triggered by climate change does not necessarily generate pessimism about the direction of our societies.
On the contrary, Latin Americans in general, and Brazilians in particular, stand out as the most optimistic about the possibility of correcting current problems.
Only 25% in Brazil fully or partially agree that it is too late to correct the ongoing climate cataclysms, despite the evidence.
This makes them the most optimistic developing country, even surpassing the Americans and their climate denialism.
Mexicans, Paraguayans, Peruvians and Colombians also exhibit majorities that trust in a happy ending without much argument to defend this point of view, supported by a naive belief in redemptive science or in business actions, thus triggering the generic alarmism shown with the theme .
This latent optimism contrasts with the skepticism of Asian societies. Two-thirds of India and six out of ten Chinese and Pakistanis openly question the idea that it is only a matter of time before solutions eliminate the problem.
The desertification of its soils, the contamination and disappearance of its water sources, the monsoon deluges and the spread of pests, the result of excessive heat, remind almost a third of humanity gathered there that optimism is the absence of information or of brutal experience with the facts.
Individualized self-responsibility
The phenomenal individualization of solutions to climate change (and the perceived partial innocence of corporations and governments) is another factor that discourages public and collective mobilization or the oversight and enforcement of effective decisions by leaders.
Nine out of ten Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians, Colombians and Paraguayans believe that their personal actions can make a difference in environmental quality. And 80% of Argentines and Chileans think the same.
These perceptions are above the average of European or North American countries, where legislation and organizational infrastructure allow consumers to assert more effectively about companies and governments to influence responsible actions.
It is even more surprising as 50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the richest 10% of the world’s population, which basically excludes almost all Latin Americans.
If European or North American citizens, with their sidereal impact on consumption, were leaders in recognizing their responsibilities, this would sound reasonable.
A Canadian emits 14 tons of COtwo per year, a Finn, 9.7, an Englishman or a Japanese, from 8.5 to 8.1, respectively. But the fact that Latin Americans do (they emit about 3 to 3.5 tons of COtwo per capita per year) tells us otherwise.
Undoubtedly, a sense of environmental empowerment helps to create more committed citizens, but it also risks forming a false consciousness of change agents, especially when it is reduced to small, innocuous, individual, everyday acts – especially when compared to the effect that corporate and state decisions have. can have.
If it is true that, on average, 60% of the emissions that affect the climate arise from residential consumption – which would make individuals into weighty agents –, it is the product design decisions made by companies and the energy sources used or stimulated. by governments –or the way of regulating or promoting how to move, consume, live, work or study– that condition the final impact of individuals in their daily management.
However, among the inhabitants of the region there is a greater inclination to blame corporations and states (which have the resources and influence to shape the public agenda on a large scale) by passing the obligation on to individuals.
Almost a third of Latin Americans do not believe that the main effort in favor of sustainability and the environment should come from companies or governments, but from individuals. Among middle and lower middle class individuals in Brazil, the percentage is 40%. In Europe, Africa or Asia, this belief is shared by at most a quarter of individuals.
With these ambiguities, the regional public agenda leaves room for emptying the environmental debate, choreographing it with rhetoric that is as alarmist as it lacks executive plans.
Given the political and financial costs of curbing consumption, mitigating the impact of our lifestyles, investing in green technologies and changing habits to neutralize the climate crisis, it will be difficult for any regional leader not to see in this inertial optimism, personalization of responsibility and partial innocence of governments and corporations an opportunity to dramatically occupy the scene, but without making decisions that change the direction of the problem.
