One (an important one!) of the many reasons humanity will fail

When SAGE 2 probe detected a hole in the ozone layer in 1985, then in just 18 months’ nations (including arch rivals and blood thirsty enemies) agreed on a binding Montreal Protocol and put it into force in less than 16 months. In the coming decades, scientists reported a gradual trend toward “healing”, and expected the recovery path to continue. Back in the 80’s, when the evidence on the extent of ozone depletion was still evolving, still the policymakers acted quickly because the stakes were high. Undoubtedly, there were other factors like the agreement was far easier to deal with given that it required banning a few chemicals and not transforming our lives and economy.

Compare this climate change, where scientific evidence emerged first in the first half of the 20th century, COP was established in 1995, and still there are no signs of reduction, let alone reversal and healing. Add more agreements to this list like Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Global Plastics Treaty, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and others that are still fighting for their survival from the very same humanity that created them.

So, what made the Ozone issue stand out?

All stakeholders in the Montreal Protocol, the policymakers, the common man, the scientific community and others unanimously agreed, saw the immediate threat, specifically human health, could establish the cause and effect, and its limited impact on the economy. In all other ‘failed’ agreements, the response of all stakeholders has been disappointing for various reasons, one of which I refer below, the one that concerns us all.

One of the biggest reasons for this failure is the human inability to take action at an individual and collective level, and the reason goes beyond the deep polarization in our society. How human brains have evolved over the last two million years, infested with cognitive biases (like hyperbolic discounting (valuing immediate though smaller rewards more than long-term larger rewards), optimism cognitive bias (tendency to overestimate our chances of positive experiences and underestimate our chances of negative experiences) and normalcy bias (human tendency to respond to threat warnings with disbelief or minimization, and to similarly underestimate a disaster’s deleterious effects) have become a threat to our existence.

As human society moves from one crisis to another, these biases negatively influence our crisis decision making. I don’t see any possibility in our democratic society the option to suddenly able to overcome or eliminate this evolutionary change. “Hard-wired” neural and evolutionary origin of cognitive biases makes them practically impossible to deal with in real life conditions.

Fall is inevitable, and the real questions confronting us are how hard humanity is going to land, and whether we will be able to rise again.