Getting around to facing our greatest challenge

Climate change is an existential crisis. So why are we mostly procrastinating, rather than confronting it?

When might we get around to dealing with the causes of climate change? (Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash)

Just now, I’m wishing I had written this column yesterday, or even the day before. But I’ve been writing a column regularly for most of my adult life, and for all that time, I have pushed myself up against a deadline before writing. I like to think that I’m giving myself the benefit of full consideration before committing ideas to text. You may judge me simply to be a procrastinator.

There’s an expert for every topic, so it’s no surprise that people have studied procrastination. They say about one-fifth of adults are chronic procrastinators, often because of what’s been called “a failure of emotional self-regulation.” Ouch.  Fuschia Sirois, a psychology professor in England, told an interviewer for The Washington Post recently that procrastination often arises when we face tasks that we find “difficult, unpleasant, aversive or just plain boring or stressful.”¹

Let me say quickly he…