Cause and effect

I blogged recently about Happiness, and Instant Gratification, and how it applies (or doesn’t) to My Make Do and Mend Year.

And it got me thinking (again).

Instant Gratification is all about cause and effect really.

You do something, like eat maltesers (other chocolate products are available), or drink a glass of wine, or buy some nice bright new shiny something, and you get the instant hit, the uplifting feeling of getting something you wanted. That in itself is an effect, but further down the line there is a more delayed effect, the weight gain, or the hangover, or realising that your shiny new thing now demands to be replaced or updated by another shiny new thing.
And maybe this is the problem with trying to talk to people about Climate Change. The effect is too delayed.

So we consume, and dispose and gas guzzle, and the instant effect is the uplifting thing of getting what we want, or saving some time, or just making life a bit easier. And the delayed effect, the Climate Change, the build up of greenhouse gases etc etc is delayed. Too delayed for us to compute that we did anything to CAUSE it.
If the hangover hit 5 minutes after we drank the wine, or the chocolate literally went straight to your hips, we would probably all do a bit less scoffing and a bit more running.
And if the sea levels rose, or we had to physically take our rubbish to the landfill site and see it for all it’s awfulness, or the hurricane hit 5 minutes after we filled our black bins to over-flowing, then maybe we would all be a bit more pro-active about trying to stop it.

Maybe now, as our weather patterns seem to be changing, as we seem to having more and more extreme weather, not just here in the UK, but all over the world, as we enter what may be yet another wash-out of a summer here in the UK, people will start to join the dots and make the connection.
Our actions are now having a direct consequence on our lives.

Cause and effect.

Will it be enough to galvanise us to change?