Scary Diagnosis: I’m Prediabetic…But It Taught Me How to Solve Climate Change
Similar problems, different strategies
It was more than a little bit shocking. I opened my last blood work report from a recent doctor visit and there it was: blood glucose at 115. Apparently, 99 or lower is normal; above 125 is diabetes. The doc’s note said: “You are in the pre-diabetic range.”
Whaaaaaat?
I’m sixty years old. Always been in good health. I still feel great — strong and fit. I mountain bike or hike fairly regularly and I cook almost everything from scratch. How could this be? Being who I am, I started to research.
Turns out that 96 million Americans are probably pre-diabetic, and most of them have no idea. Like me. Most of them are ticking time bombs… like me. And these imbalances increase their likelihood of getting other diseases such as heart disease or stroke… like me.
And like me, they don’t know they are in danger. They don’t know they are in danger because they have no symptoms. They have no experience to tell them they are in danger. Nothing bad appears to be happening in their lives.
Kind of like climate change.
Our health status and climate change are similar in that we can understand our personal risk through data and probability, but not through experience. I had no idea I was pre-diabetic because I had no symptoms — that is, I had no experience of it. Once my medical facility collected my blood data, however, science and medicine put it into perspective. I am moving from healthy and fit to unhealthy and ill. And, importantly, that knowledge gives me a chance to act on it.
We Have a Similar Problem with Climate Change
Just like with pre-diabetes, most people still don’t know the climate change data — just like me before they tested my blood. Besides the 83 million Americans who don’t even believe the data, most of us have no experience with it. We have no symptoms. Nothing bad happens in our lives. Life goes on day-to-day. We go to work, we get our income, we pay the bills, take the kids to school, and get a date with our spouse once a week. In other words, we have no symptoms and no experience to ring the proverbial alarm bell.
But the data are there. My blood sugar level is 115. Earth’s average temperature increase is 1.5 degrees Celsius. The data mean we are in danger. They mean the risk of disease is increasing. They mean we have a problem.
The difference is that I can take action and have a direct impact on my blood sugar level. The effect depends on no one else. Change my lifestyle, and I can prevent diabetes. What am I doing? Switching from eggs every morning to a spinach-based smoothie, which includes almonds, banana, avocado, and kiwi. Pasta, which I used to eat every day (sometimes twice a day) is losing out to beans and oats-based granola. Exercise is now a daily requirement. Cocktails are headed out the window. I am determined to get that blood sugar reading down to reduce and remove that risk to my health.
For climate, I can reduce my carbon footprint to absolute zero — disconnect from the grid, buy an EV, go meatless, never fly, and degrow my life. I’ll feel good, but unless everyone else does the same thing, nothing changes. Earth’s data keeps getting worse. Temperature increases go to 2.0, then 2.5, then 3.0 degrees or more. It’s like doing everything right and still watching my blood sugar rise to 125. Pretty soon, I have diabetes. And symptoms.
Directly attributable symptoms tend to create action. Human beings seem to be wired this way. We hate pain and illness, so we respond when we experience it. Data about one’s body will also spur action for some, and not for others. It seems to depend on one’s faith in the data versus the power of habituated behavior. This battle occurs inside oneself, but if the changes are undertaken, the change and benefit attribute directly to oneself. There is a powerful reinforcement of the new action — your data, the blood sugar levels, improve. Risk wanes, and you feel better about your life. You had a direct effect.
Most of us, however, are still not directly experiencing the dire effects of climate change. We don’t live in Fort Myers, Somalia, or Nelson Mandela Bay. And even if we do live in an affected area, it is hard to see that climate change is the direct cause. In Fort Myers, it was a hurricane. In Somalia and Nelson Mandela Bay, it is drought. There have always been hurricanes and droughts, so why do we assume these are from climate change? Experts say they are worse because of climate change and increased temperatures, but all they see is the water in the basement and the water tap that comes out dry.
Do you see where I am going here?
When people have symptoms, they take action to relieve those symptoms. Get a headache, take Tylenol. Got a heart attack, get bypass surgery.
When people have data indicating a problem about themselves that is controllable, they may take action, depending on two things — first, did they collect the data and put it in context, and second, can they take action that is acceptable to them and has an impact on changing the danger.
But when people see a data-indicated problem that they can’t control directly, that creates effects they cannot predict, and on which their personal action has no discernible effect, many people will not take action. The motivation and reward system of psychology just isn’t there. This is precisely the situation with climate change.
Our Options
And so, we have two options. First, we can browbeat people to get them to believe the data which we believe (remembering that 25% of Americans doubt or deny that data). We can argue for the connections we see between 1.5 degrees and Fort Myers. We can say that the 22-year drought in the American Southwest is a changing climate. We can do all this, and if successful, we get to the question: Well, what can we do about it? But since any direct individual action can’t be traced directly to effects, like it can in your body, a primary reinforcement mechanism to continue that action doesn’t exist. It just gets harder and harder to sustain change in this kind of environment. Some people will be up for the challenge, but many will not.
The other option is to focus on systemic changes that take individual choice out of the equation. Rather than working on changing individual consumer behavior without the required reinforcing psychological rewards, we can change the system. Trying to get the entire world to use less energy is a very heavy lift with low odds of success. But changing the source of electricity from fossil fuels to renewable non-burning sources can be done at the societal systems level. Granted, this is also a lift as it requires new investment on one hand and unwinding old investment on the other. Simple policy changes like the tax credit for solar development, however, change the logic of investment and once that change is accomplished, people throughout the system make their own decisions in a direction toward the favored outcomes. That logic rewards them for making the right decisions. On the other hand, consumers — including those who doubt or deny the science — no longer need to be convinced about anything. Their electric devices work today the same way they did yesterday, it’s just that the electricity comes from a different source, while the reduction in GHG emissions benefits everyone.
Climate change is a systemic problem. Although many people are not experiencing the worst symptoms yet, that doesn’t mean we won’t. Like with pre-diabetes, the data are warning us. But unlike challenges in our bodies, individual actions only have an impact at the distant margins. Aggregated, individual choices can have an impact, but with so many interests competing for individual attention and billions of people who doubt and deny the science, it is doubtful the aggregation can become large enough to solve the problem. Contribute? Yes. Solve? Probably not. We need to make systemic change. If we rely on individuals to change their lifestyle behavior, we will ultimately fail. This is what my prediabetes diagnosis helped me see.
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