When we talk about the upcoming Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, one thing we often focus on is how the world’s governments are going to have difficulty reconciling their differences in order to create a comprehensive and productive agreement to combat climate change. However, experts at a climate change psychology conference in London last week argued against this top-down idea, and instead said that the general public needs to be educated more thoroughly on the climate change threat if any international agreement is to be reached.

Reuters reports that the experts state that climate change can often fly under the public’s radar, especially in light of things like a global financial crisis. And as climate change is an ongoing and oftentimes imperceptible crisis, it easily slips down the priority ladder when anything else comes up. Like Balloon Boys and whatnot.

“Progress can sometimes happen without much public involvement but climate change is not one of those issues,” said Paul Stern of the U.S. National Research Council, which advises the U.S. government on issues such as health and science…

“It’s about making sure communications with the public are meaningful, immediate, tangible and concrete. Talking over people’s heads results in disinterest or apathy,” David Uzzell, environmental psychology professor at the University of Surrey, said on the fringes of the conference.

As it is, less than half of Britons think climate change will affect them in their lifetime, the number of Americans that believe there is solid evidence of global warming has dropped 14 percent in a year, and Aussies only rank climate change 7th on a national priority list. All this adds up to governments giving short shrift to climate change, because they don’t see the interest in their constituents. And they’re obviously right. The public, as whole, doesn’t see climate change affecting them, right this instant, the way their depleted 401(k) is. At the same time, the long-term effects of climate change seem, well, a long way off. It’s simply a part of human makeup to care less about those things and people distanced from us, either spatially or temporally. Just how it is, though in this case, it’s a dangerous mindset to have.

So prior to Copenhagen, we need to band together as a public and insist that we see climate change as a threat not only to future generations, but to ourselves. Yet how do we do that? Oh, look, the Reuters article actually points to our sister site (I swear I didn’t do this on purpose), Hopenhagen.org, which has as its goal increasing climate change awareness. Check it out!

photo credit: Takver’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons