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Psychological Aspects of Waking Up to Global Environmental Change

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David P. Turner / July 23, 2026

The waking-up meme is a bit of a trope in the context of global environmental change.  Greta Thunberg believes “the world is waking up” to the climate crisis; attention to the collapse of biodiversity has been cast as “Waking up to Nature”; deforestation should inspire waking up to the environmental costs of overconsumption.  Despite this overexposure (and ambiguous use of the “woke” meme in culture wars about race and social justice), the waking-up metaphor might still do some work for us in trying to understand what it takes to foster global sustainability.

Here, I examine one route to personal waking up in relation to global environmental change (GEC), and consider how the associated psychological processes, or realizations, might help induce societal-scale change.

With respect to GEC, humanity (“we”) are undeniably in a crisis that needs waking up to at the personal and societal scale.  Essentially, many of the global environmental quality indices (planetary boundaries) are getting worse, yet there is limited public urgency about making the fundamental changes needed to address them.  The psychological and social sciences can contribute significantly to understanding how these needed changes can occur.

Waking Up at the Scale of an Individual

There are many kinds of waking up (notably spiritual awakening), but for the purposes of this essay, individual waking up to GEC has two aspects: 1) realization that the way you think and feel about the environment is highly dependent on your genetic and cultural programming, and may represent a limited worldview, and, 2) coming to understand the evolutionary context that produced and shaped you, which could inform a needed redesign of your personal value system.

Genetic and Cultural Programming

Genetic programming refers to results from the field of evolutionary psychology that suggest some of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are strongly shaped by biological evolution (natural selection).  Both benevolent tendencies (e.g. altruism, love for babies) and not so benevolent tendencies (e.g. fear of strangers) are probably rooted in genes.  Perhaps most relevant to GEC is biologist E.O. Wilson’s claim that we are naturally imbued with some problematic tendencies (e.g. acquisitiveness), but also with biophilia (love of biological life).

Cultural programming refers to aspects of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors that we learn from our parents, teachers, peers, and informational environment.  It matters for our relationship with GEC because our models and teachers may be ignorant or biased about GEC.  If our education lacked much concern for global scale entities and processes, we are unlikely to take an interest in, and help to mitigate, GEC issues.

Waking up is recognizing that personality development and acculturation tend to lock us into highly constructed, and possibly self-harming, belief systems.  With that realization, the individual becomes alive to the possibilities for self-directed personal change and growth, or even some kind of organic psychological transformation.  AI may turn out to be an incredible aid to self-education because individuals can readily enter into dialogue with, and learn from,  AI chatbots that are vastly well informed and endlessly patient (with, of course, caveats about bias, misinformation, and overdependence).

For personal waking up to truly take hold (i.e. change one’s self-identity), new behaviors must be manifested.  Regarding GEC, those behaviors might look like reducing consumption of fossil fuels (e.g. buying an EV rather than a gas guzzler), investigating supply chains for products you consume, becoming politically active, or contributing to environmental NGOs.

Awareness of Cosmic Evolution and its Implications

Once a person wakes up to having been programmed, they may need a framework for creating a revised self, notably with regard to values.  In the Enlightenment era, when forward thinkers rejected Christian dogma as a source of truth, they began to wonder what then is the basis for morality (when God is dead, where does morality come from?).

Scientists have pulled together a coherent picture of the history of the known universe (i.e. Big History or Cosmic Evolution).  A key feature in that scientific narrative is a pattern of increasing complexity, generated by pervasive evolution in many forms (physical, biological, and cultural).  We owe our existence on this extraordinary planet to these creative forces.

When that cosmic perspective comes into view, a possible alignment of the self with the cosmic process presents itself.  Rather than a lifestyle of blithely contributing to degradation of the biosphere – as we are doing with the 6th Extinction and by mowing down the remaining rain forests – we might aspire to conservation and enhancement of the environment.  Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” points the way towards a new (non-dualistic) GEC values paradigm.

The current Earth system – with its interacting lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and technosphere – is one of the most complex entities in the universe.  It deserves our respect and care.  And, with sympathetic attention, it could well evolve into something more sustainable than its current state (albeit with greater technosphere energy flow).

What Waking Up Means at the Societal Level

A society begins to wake up when a critical mass of citizens starts to question social norms, e.g. the counter-culture movement in the 1960s questioned societal norms regarding civil rights, the Vietnam War, and environmental quality.  Social awakening leads to public discourse, with the effect that the current status or trajectory is viewed as a product of obsolete thinking or sentiments, and should be changed.  Organized public movements advocating for change follow, and lastly actual changes are built into laws, policies, and norms.

Societies around the world are indeed now waking up to: 1) the fact that we are living in the Anthropocene (human impacts on the Earth system are at the geologic scale), and 2) the recognition that humanity has a responsibility not to extinguish itself or degrade the biosphere.  These are societal identity issues. 

Concurrent Individual and Societal Waking Up

Optimally, individual waking up and societal waking up re-enforce each other.  Individuals, who wake up and change their own ideas and behaviors, self-organize to alert others to new possibilities for themselves and for their society. 

To complete an effective societal wake-up, the ideals emerging from individual waking-up experiences must inspire more organized, movement-type activities that ramify into structural changes in society.  Some movements (e.g. Occupy Wall Street in 2011) were effective in raising issues and popularizing particular viewpoints, but not successful in generating structural change.  In contrast, the 20th Century civil rights movement in America led to specific legislation, e.g. the Civil Rights Act, because activists engaged with the political process.

There is always a danger that individual psychological change can be hijacked, e.g. by corporate or commercial interests, hence blunting pressure to change at the societal scale.   The proliferation of roadside litter in the 1950s – caused in part by corporate introduction of single-use disposable containers – induced individual awakening about the issue, and roused public sentiment to do something about it.  However, corporate interests introduced a very successful advertising campaign that put the responsibility on the litterer (rather than on the importance of mandating recyclable containers).

In driving societal change, it helps to have prestige bias (we tend to believe people who are famous, e.g. Robert Redford on the environment), and conformity bias (we tend to believe in something the majority believes) come into play.

It also helps to have economic conditions in society that support new enlightened views.  The Boomers were able to build an effective counterculture movement in the 1960s partly because of the prosperity of the post WWII decades.  Young people were able to support themselves and be activists.  Renewable energy is now growing by leaps and bounds, perhaps more so because the economy favors renewables than because renewable energy is an effective strategy to mitigate climate change.  Economists debate the design of an economy that is not destructively consumptive but retains the vitality to power through a sustainability revolution.

Conclusion

Addressing GEC will require significant changes in individual and social psychology.  Fortunately, individuals and societies have malleable identities.  At the individual level, waking up to limitations imposed by biological and cultural programming, and to the cosmic origins of order, can inspire new identities as planetary citizens.  At the societal scale, civil society and educational institutions can spread awareness and motivate structural change.  Economists must design an economy that can invest in an eco-friendly infrastructure.  Leaders and politicians must make it all happen.

Genetic Programming, Cultural Programming, and Self-programming

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image of axons in the human brain
Axonal nerve fibers in the brain as determined by the measured anisotropy (directionality) of water molecules inside them.  Image Credit: Connectome

David P. Turner / March 13, 2022

There are many specific prescriptions about how humanity must change to restore a hopeful future (e.g. a global renewable energy revolution), and implementing these prescriptions will require new pro-environmental behaviors by individuals along with shifts in societal values.  In this post, I briefly examine four aspects of a simple psychological framework that shapes the personal sphere of social transformation, and I consider how adoption of that framework could inspire pro-environmental behavior.

A common first approximation to explaining how humans behave is by reference to “nature and nurture”.  I will add a third factor – the influence of self-determination, i.e. the products of self-directed thought.  My fourth factor in this framework is one’s personal experience, which of course can crush us or enable us to blossom.

1. Nature refers to our genetic inheritance.  Neurologists broadly understand the genetically-based architecture of the brain, and the role of neural circuity in brain function, but they are still working on how processes like memory and consciousness actually work biophysically. 

Studies of brain function associated with specific activities show that certain areas or modules of the brain (genetically derived) perform particular functions, e.g. mathematical operations or making music.  Psychologists and neurologists generally believe that humans are born with genetic predispositions in how we feel, think, and act (presumably related to the wiring of our brain).  Some examples include our attraction to sweet foods, our fear of snakes, and how readily as children we learn a language.  

Without going overboard (i.e. espousing that genes alone determine behavior), we might use a computer programming metaphor to indicate significant genetic influences on behavior.  Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson opined that “genes hold culture on a leash”, referring specifically to the influence of genes on values. 

Regarding our feelings and behaviors related to the environment, it is important to recognize that some genetically-influenced traits – while being the product of millions of years of biological evolution – may be obsolete in the context of our contemporary high technology civilization.  We are much better at paying attention to rapidly changing threats (e.g. a charging rhinoceros) than to slow onset threats (e.g. climate change), yet now we must attend closely to threats in the long-term future. 

On the other hand, some proposed genetically-based traits – such as biophilia (love of nature) – may be particularly helpful in the context of fostering pro-environmental behavior.

2) Nurture refers to the influences of our cultural environment on how we think, feel, and act.  The success of Homo sapiens is attributed in part to our capacity for social learning.  Children mimic behaviors of their caregivers and tend to adopt their belief system.  As adults, we continue to learn from a variety of cultural sources.

Learned behaviors (e.g. hunting in a hunter/gatherer society) are often adapted to the local environment, and learned cultural beliefs help bind us to our local social group.  Here again, I think the term “programming” is appropriate if used in a metaphorical sense.  We are culturally programmed in some respects. 

Richard Dawkins referred to the units of cultural inheritance as memes.  Note that memes do not have to be true to be useful.  A mythical narrative of tribal origins may help create a sense of tribal identity, which could strengthen within group solidarity in the face of inter-tribal rivalry.

As with our genetic influences, some of our cultural influences may be obsolete or need modifying in the context of on-going environmental change, e.g. the current emphasis on consumerism in the developed countries.

To complicate things, we have significant biases (going back to our genetic programming) about what we learn.  We are particularly likely to believe or imitate leaders (prestige bias) and tend to believe what is believed by a majority of our peers (conformity bias).

3) Self-determination (self-programming) is an overlay on genetic and cultural programming.  Mature human beings can consciously consider alternative views and reflect on what to believe and how to act (albeit there is always a lot going on unconsciously).  This capacity introduces a sense of agency and inspiration.

Self-determination is certainly impacted by emotions, thoughts, and information that originate from genetic and cultural programming.  To some degree, however, impulses from these sources can be consciously recognized and over-ridden. 

Education is in a sense cultural programming, but training in critical thinking and more broadly learning how to learn, can open the door to robust self-programming.  The firehose of information now available through the various media (some true and some not) makes this kind of thinking especially relevant now. 

4.  Personal Experience.  Many genes are expressed only under particular circumstances, and learned behaviors can only be acquired when there is exposure to a relevant example or information.  Additionally, the degree to which learned information is internalized and begins to affect behavior depends on other psychological factors.  Motivation to learn is stimulated by a) a positive connection between teacher and learner, b) a sense of autonomy or self-direction rather than being controlled, and c) a feeling of competence associated with accomplishing a well-designed gradation of tasks and getting approval from significant others.

Let’s consider two cases of pro-environmental behavior in which the three types of programming and experience interact.

Slowing Population Growth.  Historically, most cultures encouraged high levels of reproduction, which is certainly predictable in the face of the kind of intergroup competition common in human history.  More group members make for stronger groups.

Considering the importance of reproduction in biological evolution, it also makes sense that there is a strong genetic influence in favor of reproductive behavior (e.g. mate seeking and sexual pleasure in humans). 

For a woman or couple to decide to have few or no children for pro-environmental reasons (potentially in the face of their own instincts and pro-natal cultural policies) would require significant self-programming.  Growing up (experiencing) a society that values education and opportunities for self-actualization other than parenthood would make the choice easier.

Global and Planetary Citizenship.  Global scale problems, like anthropogenic climate change, require humanity to work collaboratively towards changing the current dangerous trajectory.  However, we seem to be genetically primed to identify with a social group of some kind, which also implies a tendency to classify everyone outside the group as suspect. 

Our local society inculcates a unique language and a belief system that differentiates us from outsiders and may induce xenophobia.  Nationalism is on the ascendency these days, but it is not the limit of what a society can be. 

Thus, becoming a global citizen requires some degree of self-programming.  Individuals must learn about issues of global environmental change and deliberate on how to participate in ameliorating the problems.

Besides identifying with humanity as their tribe, it will be important that people identify with the Earth system as their home, as a whole of which they are a part. 

A common model for societal change begins with an early adopter minority that inspires broader uptake of new values, leading (with some help from prestige and conformity biases) to a majority view (e.g. the broad adoption of anti-littering in the U.S. in the 1960s).  The early adopter minority may come from people who recognize the possibility that the majority view is wrong, and then begin to envision and act on alternatives.  It is encouraging to see a bubbling up of pro-environmental minorities nearly everywhere on the planet now that could grow in an organic manner to become a pro-environment majority.