Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? This book explores answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from the author’s study of “Bygdaby,” the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000–2001. From 2000–2001, the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in loc ... More

Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? This book explores answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from the author’s study of “Bygdaby,” the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000–2001. From 2000–2001, the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on their use of fossil fuels. The book attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and presents this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized nations are responding to global warming. The author finds that, for the highly educated and politically savvy residents of Bygdaby, global warming was both common knowledge and unimaginable. This denial is traced through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. The author’s report from Bygdaby, supplemented by comparisons throughout the book to the United States, tells a larger story behind our paralysis in the face of today’s predictions from climate scientists.