Nour: Sometimes it feels like we are simultaneously living in two worlds — a physical reality and a whole other realm inside of our heads — and I wish this other realm would stop overwhelming us with constant racing thoughts. In our physical reality, the connection between ecocide and genocide is only allowed to be discussed inside classrooms, in academic papers and assignments — a connection that most Western climate activists have turned a blind eye to. In the other realm, however, the connection between both is very strong. It demands all of our attention and energy. It looks at us, sharply, in the eyes as we attend to our day-to-day activities and commands for its name to echo loudly in each lecture hall, hang out, and assignment.

Dana: Before I properly open my eyes every morning, I check the news. This has been my physical reality every morning for more than a year. On most days, I witness the burning down of trees and farms, along with the killing of farmers who simply attempt to collect the harvest of the year. I witness animals dying and becoming displaced across the world due to war and natural disasters. I am even shown statistics of the consequences of armed conflict on the environment, and specifically how much bigger of an impact the use of military-grade explosives has on the planet than we would all like to believe. This is our physical reality.

Nour: I also open Instagram in the morning and it is filled with stories of our friends celebrating Halloween. I tap to see the other story — 300 people found dead. I tap again — my childhood friend got engaged. And again, the forests in Australia are burning and the floods in Florida take so many lives. The duality of our existence has been agonizing. There is no other way to describe it: we live with chronic cognitive dissonance or the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs. I am confident in the politics and values of the people I surround myself with on social media but the tension between posting about Halloween while simultaneously posting about the war and natural disasters that have been affecting the world has been deafening. Should humanity not come to a complete halt?

Dana: In 2021, a group of international lawyers came together and defined ecocide as the “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” Currently, 11 countries consider ecocide a crime, with others also working on policies to recognize it. In 1972, the Swedish Prime Minister gave a speech at a UN Conference about ecocide that remains extremely relevant today. He said, “The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention.” Somehow, that has only gotten worse since then, with more indiscriminate bombing being done, and more bulldozers and herbicides being used. However, the thing I am always thinking about is how the continuation of wars has to be linked to the floods we are seeing in Spain, the “forest fire season” in America, and now the several extremely damaging hurricanes that are hitting different parts of the world. These disasters are the result of the governments prioritizing funding their militaries rather than relief efforts after natural disasters. It is a cycle: wage wars, which cause a lot of ecological damage, then that perpetuates climate change, leading to natural disasters, yet no relief efforts are made and resources are funneled back into sustaining the conflicts. And the cycle repeats.

Nour: This cycle of indifference can be also observed at the micro-level. What is far more agonizing about it is that people on social media glorify being able to juggle between both. Congratulations, in the capitalist society that we live in, taking the loss of lives and destruction of nature gracefully and professionally is praised! Warranted anger from our side is dealt with alienation. But what our friends describe as praiseworthy, is a stereotypical example of status quo bias, preferring circumstances to stay the same by doing nothing which may happen when the importance of the decision is significant. It is a consequence of bias towards someone’s self-interest than to the common good. It is a psychological cognitive bias that drives humans' decision-making process. It is closely related to the theory of social value orientation which considers how much a person tends to take their own and others' interests into account when they make decisions.

However, the key here is the capitalist society that we identify with. While we all are in the same social group of capitalism, it conditions you to only take self-serving actions or actions that benefit the system itself. Thus, in choosing to merely post about the catastrophic events happening in their home countries, people make a deliberate choice to value their comfort (which abides by the values and conditions of capitalism) at the expense of the loss of habitat and human lives.

Status quo bias, as defined above, is related to the cognitive bias towards the self rather than the common good, because status quo bias often prioritizes our comfort and familiarity over bigger changes that are deemed more uncomfortable, thus not benefiting our self-interest. What capitalism praises is extremely individualistic and alienating. It sets a precedent by alienating the groups suffering from the rest of the world and it implicitly gives global institutions involved in the injustices a bigger playground to cause more suffering and destruction for as long as it benefits their interests. The status quo bias that our communities are choosing to dictate their action is driving humanity to more human losses.

Dana: Nour and I, already having experienced so much cognitive dissonance, then walk into class, expecting (probably wrongfully) for this to be a safe haven for our ideas and emotions. We sit in policy, law, and psychology classes, discussing the nuances of the political and legal worlds, and talking about the ramifications of war, which is deemed very normal. Yet, for some reason, no one seems to discuss ecocide.

Nour: Ecocide can be accounted for by the extreme power imbalances and “fateful superiority” that is infesting the Western world. Edward Said put it best when he wrote in Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors: “….for if in general, you have reduced the non-European world to the status of a subsidiary or inferior region, it becomes easier to invade and pacify it…” Are we truly post-colonial, when the “Global South” is merely reduced to a vessel for the empowerment of the Western World through the indiscriminate bombing of the region’s countries, exploiting its natural resources, and being the main cause behind the melting of our ice caps? In the 1990s, when global leaders had an opportunity to act to stop climate change, President Reagan’s administration decided not to. The economists on his side, did not deny the legitimacy of climate change but argued that treating its consequences rather than its causes would be less expensive. This was reflected in Exxon’s, the biggest supplier of hydrocarbon fuels, position: society has sufficient time to technologically adapt to a CO2 greenhouse effect. However, in a world where the “Global South” is being made systematically poorer each year, who is paying for the price of climate change? Once again, the actions of the Western world have been driven by a cognitive bias toward their self-interest and a complete disregard for the other.

Dana: Everyone sitting in class seems to want to change the world and fight for the climate, and despite ecocide being one of the easiest things to prevent, even climate activists ignore it. This is a common case of attitude-behavior gap, which is when despite somebody feeling strongly about a certain behavior, there is an inconsistency between their beliefs and their actions. In this scenario, even though most people in classes are both environmentalists and anti-war activists, they tend to exclude ecocide from their conversations. This is, once again, due to the seeming immensity of the problem, and the human cognitive bias to favor smaller, easier changes to bigger, more difficult ones, even if we know that the bigger ones are infinitely more beneficial for the climate. Part of this problem could even stem from the fear of being the only one talking about ecocide, despite that being an obvious cognitive bias that is simply untrue. There are always people talking about ecocide and the connections between war and climate change. However, another reason might just be because the media and politicians have always focused on the i-frame (individual thought and behavior) rather than the s-frame (the rules and laws of the system). We have consistently been told that our specific individual action takes precedence over the changing of systemic problems. If only every single person could go vegan, take short showers, and bike instead of drive, then climate change would just magically reverse and we would fix the planet. If I have learned anything in my classes, however, that is simply untrue.

Nour: Nevertheless, even when actions are being taken, they are extremely minor. A few weeks ago I decided to adopt a plant-based diet, but how does my plant-based diet channel collective action to stop the suffering of our people and earth? Minor changes are simply actions to console one’s heart — they are self-serving. A lot of people argue that it is lesser-evilism. However, lesser-evilism is a facade. It is a way big troubled institutions dangle individualized minor actions to take to buy an individual’s silence and promote a sense of climate doomism which is defined by a belief that climate change is inevitable and impossible to mitigate. A plant-based diet should go hand in hand with collective legal action to protect our environment. Yet, when the International Court of Justice itself has failed to include ecocide as an international crime, what bigger message of climate doom could there be?

Dana: Have you ever spoken to White “Liberal” people about the climate? Because I have, a lot recently. Nour and I have European and American flatmates who are doing a Master’s Degree in sustainability, and engaging in conversation with them about climate change is always an interesting endeavor. This is partly due to them being European/American themselves, but also due to their Master's program, known for its mobility opportunities across Europe – Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Ireland, and Germany. It does strike me as odd that a program about sustainability predominantly focuses on the “Global North”, when presently and historically, the “Global South” has contributed far less to climate change than the “Global North” in terms of Greenhouse Gases, yet have been most impacted by climate change.

This is just one example of Social Identity Theory, which states that we group ourselves and others into social groups, derive meaning and purpose from those groups, and then experience in-group favoritism and out-group-discrimination. This simply means that we favor social groups that we exist in (same religious, ethnic, and interest groups) more than other groups (people from different religious, ethnic, and interest groups). This is why Europeans care about climate justice within the EU, but rarely outside of it. It is also why a concept like ecocide goes unnoticed by them because it is happening in countries abroad, not their own. It is in this us vs them, individualistic area that the ignorance of ecocide is formed. It is also where the combination of all of the psychological theories and phenomena discussed in this article come together, and why our physical reality and everyone’s mental realities are completely different. It is why eco-anxiety, feelings of anxiety and distress about climate change and environmental damage, always seem to take precedence over the actual lives impacted by ecocide and climate change.

Nour: While the “Global South” has been impacted the most by climate change, even the solutions brought up are extremely Eurocentric. One solution for dealing with eco-anxiety is internal activism which is explained in Chapter 5 of Generation Dread by Britt Wray as learning how to process some of the anxiety, fear, and grief and learn how to fold them into our lives. But is this applicable to the Global South, when anxiety, fear, and grief have been our entire lives?