As a climate scientist, I always wonder if we have tunnel vision on climate change as the most important issue facing humanity. No matter what else is going on, climate is a relentless news generator now and we are only happy to feed on it. Climate change appears to be centre stage except when elections come along. We then mourn that climate change does not seem to be a life-or-death issue for the politicians contesting the elections.
We saw this happen during the recent US election. Now, after Donald Trump’s big win, end-of-the-world scenarios continue to be drawn about what his victory will mean for climate issues. Such a continuing sense of crisis comes from tunnel vision.
How does this phenomenon play out in general? As the US comes to terms with its historic election results, people on both sides of the divide are stunned that the other side does not see the obvious problems with their candidate. What most of us do not see is that they have all gone deep down a rabbit hole, eyes wide shut. Seemingly obvious and sensible choices become immutable preferences. Before we know it, we are in a dark tunnel where our single most important choice has become the all-powerful filter to let in or shut out other people and other views.
Secret passwords
Once we choose an indispensable quality in a person, we only let in those people who meet this single criterion and filter out anybody who doesn’t live up to that sacrosanct value. For instance, an individual or group may make the innocuous choice to associate only with polite people. There may be other perfectly safe and sane people whose only issue is that they are sometimes brusque or irritable. But brusqueness and irritability are likely to be considered unacceptable in the polite social group. Even though a short-tempered or high-strung personality may just be an idiosyncrasy with no bigotry or hatred involved, such a person will not get past the tunnel vision on politeness. Yet, we all know people who can happily carry all sorts of bigotry and hatred and yet consistently be soft-spoken or fake politeness. They might make it past the “polite” barrier.
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If you extend this concept to every choice we make, from friendships to candidates in elections, you will realise that this is what we saw playing out in the US election.
Rich man’s choice
It is well known by now that Elon Musk, one the richest men in the world, threw all his immense resources behind Donald Trump. Tens of millions of people found his choice shocking and incomprehensible, especially because Musk is considered one of the smartest men in the world. But Musk made it clear that he had no doubt that it was only Trump who could save the US from annihilation.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk with US President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania (US), on October 5, 2024. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is positioned to have sweeping powers in the second Trump administration as a deputy tasked with restructuring government operations using his aggressive approach to business. | Photo Credit: JIM WATSON
His was not a personal choice. Musk put all his resources into convincing as many others as possible; even offering million-dollar awards for those who signed on to supporting his candidate. His social media platform X became a very friendly playground to post not only bits of gossip about the opposition but also ideas and concepts that might be considered hate speech or misogyny or racism because Musk and Trump together also made this the testing ground for “free speech”.
Unshakeable faith
Surveys and analyses are regularly undertaken to understand how people can ignore even the most shocking behaviour of their chosen leaders. College education, religion, gender, colour, job security, anti-immigrant sentiments, and so on are all implicated in people’s choices, but it is still not clear what that one unshakeable criterion is; if any, that they may be using to filter out everything else that the other side finds abominable. This is true for both sides. It is obvious as daylight to each side that the other’s candidate is inhuman, anti-god, unpatriotic, and worse.
“It is clear that people’s trust in democracy is now a victim of the tunnel vision phenomenon.”
Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind argues that people choose this sacrosanct value intuitively and they mostly seek out groups who pick the same value. Such confirmation bias is deadly because we prefer to set aside facts if they contradict our beliefs, and many real-life examples and game theory experiments show that we are all highly susceptible to confirmation bias. What is more deadly, though, is that social media can now feed our intrinsic confirmation bias simply by tracking our activities. Artificial intelligence (AI) now feeds our belief systems, albeit algorithmically and not teleologically.
No light at the end of tunnel vision
How can so many millions on each side of the divide be so right in their own world and so utterly wrong in the other world? It is clear by now that dogged adherence to one’s own sacrosanct choice leads to completely eliminating the other’s views.
We are all used to taking politicians with a pinch of salt. What then is this new phenomenon where the world seems so divided at all levels? Is social media and the over-abundance of information making us less tolerant of even the smallest of differences and making them appear insurmountable? Or are these aspects simply amplifying some intrinsic tendency we have always had in us?
When we look at the impact of perturbations such as climate events on various species, including ourselves, we try to diagnose if new genes are manifesting themselves or if the frequency of an existing genetic trait has been altered. For example, evidence suggests that frequent perturbations in the past increased the resistance and resilience of our ancestors to cope with environmental changes. We have the ability to respond adaptively to persistent environmental perturbations, but, of course, some of us will perish along the way.
It is the gene-cultural evolution we are so uniquely capable of that has made possible the Information Age and our response to it. Creations such as AI appear to inherit our temptations. Keywords are tracked by search engines to feed us more of what we are already consuming. Before we know it, we may be in an echo chamber without even choosing to be in one. AI amplifies our intrinsic biases and gives us a tunnel vision that soon becomes a comfort zone.
Do we make politicians, or do they make us? We all feel entitled to say that politics has become vitiated, and politicians will do anything for power. Alas, we are the ones choosing the leaders. Some politicians may even seek the help of AI and external agencies to spread fake news about opponents to win elections. But what is even more subversive is that the electorate is now primed to pay no heed to such dangerous activities by their own candidate while being shocked at everything done by the opposing candidate.
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Even after a government is elected, the opposition’s prime motive may be to not let the government function smoothly. Obstructing or bringing down the government may become a single-minded obsession. And in this game, it is hardly clear if the good of the community, State, or country gets any consideration at all.
It is clear that people’s trust in democracy is now a victim of the tunnel vision phenomenon. Democracy cannot be perfect since it is a human system, and we are not perfect. However, the institutions meant to safeguard the legitimacy of the democratic process and ensure safe and fair elections have been undermined. The legitimacy of these institutions has been subverted and this appears to lead to a rabbit hole that may prove too deep to emerge from.
Climate change and tunnel vision
Does the climate change narrative suffer from tunnel vision as well? It is hardly possible to avoid the news of killer climate events such as the flood that has submerged parts of Spain in mud, with a death toll likely to top 300. Climate change scientists in the media remind us constantly that they told us so and that it will only get worse. Climate forecasters on the other hand keep looking at how well their forecasts did and why even the best of forecasts could not save lives. They also emphasise the need for adaptation and resilience building. While these are wise words, we should always remember that when a year’s worth of rain falls in a few hours, adaptation and resilience will have to be very well-informed indeed and at hyperlocal scales. We are not yet providing such information at the requisite spatial and temporal scales.
Where is the tunnel vision here then? For one, we as climate warriors are not offering too many solutions to decarbonise the system, which makes it impossible for governments and people to take their attention away from economic growth and pocketbook issues. We need to be mindful of all that governments, politicians, and people on the street are facing on a day-to-day basis that forces them to ignore or downplay the climate change issue that we hold so sacrosanct. Offering one tunnel vision always engenders another tunnel vision, as is evident from the second coming of Trump in the US.
Raghu Murtugudde is Professor, IIT Bombay and Emeritus Professor, University of Maryland.
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