Last month at my wife, Suzanne’s, university, I attended no less than four lectures dealing with global environmental change. This, incidentally, is not a kind of behavior I recommend, especially for anyone prone to depression. The news from the scientific front is, at best, disturbing and more often ominous.

I won’t go into what the two scientists, one a specialist in global water issues, the other an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, said. Instead, I want to address a point made in the third lecture by Bill Blakemore, a veteran reporter for ABC News. He cited figures I have tracked back to a Rasmussen Survey that indicate that a substantial percentage of the American public—36%—still does not view global warming as a serious problem. Fully 46%, according to this same survey, maintain that global warming is caused by long-term natural trends rather than human activities.

Both these positions fly in the face of the near-universal consensus of the scientists who study these matters. Blakemore had various psychological explanations for the denial. However, I think the answer is much simpler. The facts and data with which I was presented this past week focused entirely on threats of catastrophic outcomes. One of the speakers even finished (albeit tongue in cheek) with this quote from Woody Allen:

• “More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Message to global climate change activists: Most people simply cannot stand to accept any version of the future that does not admit hope.

This, I think, has always been a failing of the environmental movement. It has too often sought to motivate people through fear and horror. Look at the priceless things you are losing every day. If you don’t change your ways, you’ll have no air to breathe or water to drink; your children will die of cancer.

Ringing the alarm bell in this fashion can be a very effective motivator in the short run, but over the long term (and when endlessly repeated), it promotes discouragement and then apathy.

This is why my favorite lecture was the fourth one. It was delivered by Majora Carter, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the so-called “genius award” and the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, a non-profit that has used environmental restoration programs to renew community and create economic opportunity in the Hunts Point neighborhood. I’ll discuss her message in my next post.