Why can't we pivot for climate change? Understanding the traps of climate change inaction

Despite being labelled one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, the global response towards climate change has been relatively slow, to say the least. To complicate things further, recent Australian-based evidence suggests that organizational actors have normalized the challenges by converting the issue into the “mundane and comfortable concerns of business as usual” over a ten-year period.

When comparing this to the current responses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the differences cannot be starker. Governments scrambled to lock down their borders despite knowing the potential impact on national economies, businesses quickly pivoted and tried to find their new normal, and while the sceptics and deniers are still present – they remain a minority. Yet, on the other hand, despite unequivocal calls to move away from a fossil-fuel regime towards a renewables-based regime, renewable energy consumption grew by a meagre 1 per cent in 2017–18 and renewables only accounted for 24 percent of electricity generated in Australia in 2019.

This leads us to the question – despite having heard the alarms raised for over two decades regarding climate change, why is it that businesses can’t seem to pivot for climate change?