Cultural Dimensions of Climate Action: Humanities Perspectives on Sustainability

Abstract

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of this century, yet scientific consensus alone has not been enough to produce the scale of action the crisis demands. This paper examines how cultural values, belief systems, and meaning-making traditions shape the way communities perceive and respond to climate change. Drawing on cultural theory, the environmental humanities, and cross-cultural psychology, the paper argues that the persistent gap between what people know about climate change and what they do about it is substantially a cultural problem, not only a political or economic one. Four dimensions of this argument are examined: the influence of cultural values on environmental concern; the role of literature, history, and the arts in constructing dominant ideas about nature and ecological responsibility; the cultural mechanisms that sustain climate denial and disengagement; and how indigenous ecological knowledge and locally grounded approaches offer alternative frameworks for sustainability. The paper argues that humanities scholarship offers resources that technical and economic approaches to climate action have consistently overlooked, and that addressing climate change effectively requires engaging with the cultural soil in which scientific knowledge takes root or withers.