Tackling climate change will require us to change the way we think, Emeritus Professor Colin Campbell-Hunt writes.
Most people reading this column now accept that the climate is changing, and that human activity is the cause.
It seems there is less acceptance that we face grave disruptions to our way of life if we don't limit climate change by eliminating our dependence on carbon-emitting technologies, starting now.
If we really did believe that, more of us would be out in the streets demanding action, and all of us would be thinking of ways to get carbon out of our lives.
So why don't we? And how can we get past the barriers and get on with the job?
A recent paper by Sander van der Linden of Princeton gives us five answers, all stemming from our ongoing scientific understanding of human psychology.
(Humans are the cause of the problem after all, so we have to be the source of the solution.)
First, our minds form understandings of the world in two ways.
"System 1'' is constantly making up stories about how the world works from our experience of life: we do it all the time without realising it.
"System 2'' on the other hand is analytical, takes conscious thought, effort and time; and we are lazy, so we tend to use it only when we have to.
The great truth about climate change is that it is a train wreck in very slow motion.
We have very, very little experience of the effects that our present lifestyles are imposing on the world, so System 1 can cheerfully conclude that all is well.
It has taken decades of System 2-type work from thousands of scientists to get us to even begin to face Al Gore's "inconvenient truth''.
But more and more the climate is confronting us with experiences outside what we know: hotter summers, floods in South Dunedin and New York subways.
More and more, System 1 is having to accept that the world is changing for the worse.
Second, before people act they make judgements about their ability to achieve the results they seek: what psychologists call "efficacy''.
As individuals, we are surely to be forgiven for looking at an approaching global apocalypse and deciding that we are powerless to anything at all to stop it.
But we are also social animals, and our opinions and our actions are greatly influenced by what we hear and see around us.
We can enhance our own sense of efficacy by joining with others: Oil Free Otago, GenZero, 350.org.
New Zealand is good at team sports.
We understand that "together, we can''.
As social animals, we are also strongly influenced by the norms we can see in action around us, what are called "descriptive norms''.
Our society already makes active use of the media to change attitudes to drink-driving, speeding and smoking.
These are topics that regularly come up in our conversations.
We know very well what society expects of us.
The same must become true of our efforts to get carbon out of our lives.
When we think about buying a turbo-powered V8 off-road four-wheel-drive monster that achieves just 8km to the litre, we should know that our friends and neighbours will think less of us.
Third, we sensibly live in the here and now. Unpleasant consequences that occur well in the future, and somewhere other than here, just don't get much attention.
But, as with System 1 thinking, the effects of climate change are increasingly forcing their way into our here and now.
Fourth, when we are confronted with a situation where we may face losses in the future if we do not accept change now, we are inclined to focus on that word "may'' and take the risk.
We put a deep discount on uncertain future costs and focus instead on the obvious costs of present change.
The good news is that our present predicament is a situation made in heaven for entrepreneurs: people who see the future coming, who know that times of radical change like these open up possibilities for unimaginable fortunes.
Think Henry Ford versus the horse 100 years ago, or Bill Gates versus computers that filled big rooms 30 years ago.
These people don't look at costs, they look at opportunities, and they will enable the changes we need to make.
Finally, our actions are motivated in two different ways.
Extrinsic motivations are stimulated by signals we receive from the environment around us.
Putting a sensible price on carbon will give us all the extrinsic motivation to reduce our use of the stuff.
But there are also intrinsic motivations, motivations that arise from our constitution as human beings.
It is sometimes a surprise to my economist friends that these motivations include a concern for the welfare of others and for future generations, and that we are prepared to act on these instincts to our own cost.
New Zealand has transformed its culture over the past 30 years to embrace a liberal philosophy that puts the individual ahead of community welfare, a philosophy that struggles to understand and make use of our intrinsic motivations to care for the community we live in.
But everywhere the political battle lines are forming to test the West's commitment to that philosophy - Trump versus Sanders - and the politics of expediency and spin is losing ground.
- Colin Campbell-Hunt is an emeritus professor at the CSAFE Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago. Each week in this column, one of a panel of writers addresses issues of sustainability.
