Is the climate crisis an attention crisis?

Are you paying attention? You might not be in a few minutes since that is the average attention span[1]. It might not even take you to the end of this article. Though it may seem like a personal inconvenience in terms of an individual, the so-called ‘attention crisis’ has been linked with general inaction on social and political issues. Namely, the climate crisis.

In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari makes the argument that the climate crisis and the attention crisis are fundamentally connected. This line of reasoning was new to me when I read the book over Christmas and I was immediately hooked. It, intuitively, makes sense. People that cannot focus for more than three minutes are likely to be more perceptive to misinformation campaigns.

The book gets a high recommendation from me. I thoroughly enjoyed the honesty and complexity of Hari’s thoughts. He manages to capture the crisis and our frazzled society from many angles, avoiding simple conclusions.

I am now reading Micheal Mann’s The New Climate Wars which dedicates a large chapter on the deflection campaigns orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry as well as state actors from, among others, Russia. Taking in how these actors have impacted the public debate about climate action, especially since the Paris agreement, it seems undoubtedly like there is a connection between our broken focus and the political inaction against climate change. Mann puts forward countless examples of a tactic he calls divide and conquer. The tactic is often used to drive a wedge between climate activists and scientists along cultural and generational divides – creating uncertainty in the general population about whether and how climate action can be effective. Actors like the climate denialist Heartland Institute[2] pitch people arguing for individual and systemic change against each other and deflect from the fact that activists usually argue that both types of action are necessary.

Would we have to deal with the current climate crisis if it wasn’t for modern attention capitalism though? I am unsure. The argument is tempting, it is sensible and a certain influence is undeniable. The 2016 American presidential elections would likely not have ended in the same way without the expansion of social media and the subsequent shattering of voters’ attention.

It is, however, hard to believe that the scale of the climate crisis today would be noticeably different in the absence of social media. Humans have always been sensitive to propaganda. The widespread support of political leadership in the Third Reich was possible entirely without social media — although other mass media like newspapers and radio certainly played an important role. I would argue though, that a slashing of the attention span of Germans at that time played a minor role in the Nazi’s media strategy.

Anyone that follows German politics today will be well aware of the influence certain industries like the automobile industry have on national policies through lobbying. As far as I am aware, this type of influence on policies does not rely on social media or in fact the attention of citizens. Instead the influence of the automobile industry is hidden away in back rooms with top politicians and manifests itself through its own continued economic importance. I argue that this is less connected to the attention crisis and more an issue of an imbalance of power between people and corporations.

Mass deflection ultimately relies on large swathes of the population to either not know or not care enough to motivate them to get involved. As a climate scientist, I experience this more and more. People I talk to seem interested at best but their hectic lives and other stressors, especially living with inflation and real-terms pay cuts, mean that most cannot make climate action a priority and take up another responsibility. Othertimes, people have not even heard of the IPCC reports and the strong evidence for climate change (yes, this truly happened to me very recently). In terms of mass deflection and information, the new age of social media adds the amplification of minority voices. This can be a positive aspect, for example, it helps Pacific Islanders share how they are already suffering the consequences of climate change. But it can also distort reality, especially through the use of troll bots. As Mann points out in The New Climate Wars, it is easy for climate denialists to have bots on twitter interact with a hashtag on twitter to make it trending and alter the public discourse.

To harness the good sides of the internet without falling for fossil fuel funded bots, is a challenge of shifting the power dynamics of the modern working world. I believe the climate crisis can be broken down into a power struggle between rich fossil fuel companies and states who profit from their business model, and the ordinary citizens who are often overburdened in an exploitative capitalist system. People worrying about how to pay for the next grocery shop or how to find affordable housing have every right to be exhausted. Social media certainly plays a role in scattering thteir attention even more and creates additional socioeconomic inequalities. But it is not the reason we find ourselves in the climate crisis. Ultimately, the issue lies much more deeply in the nature of our current working lives. For people to reconnect with nature and realise its value, they need the time to go out and enjoy it. For people to take up the fight against climate change, they need the energy and the time to take up this responsibility.

[1] There is some discussion in the academy on the average attention span of a person with results ranging from mere seconds to 18 minutes. Estimates clearly depend on the measure of attention, who is being assessed and what they are paying attention to.

[2] The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, is funded by the Koch brothers who are extremely influential climate denialists due to their company Koch Industries which works with petroleum and other chemicals.

Thank you to Sofia Della Sala for editing this piece.