In 2012 it is being said by scientists that without major change in the next 3 years the climate will have reached a point where it will be "too late." 

Barely half the US public thinks carbon pollution could warm Earth. That’s 20 percent less than in 2007, and lower than at any point in the last 12 years. In a Pew Research Center poll, Americans ranked climate dead last out of 20 top issues, behind immigration and trade policy.

Rational Change

Becoming far more than light dinner table conversation, the topic of global climate change is seen commonly in our everyday lives. Our culture over the past decade or so has been barraged with information concerning climate change. Some have chosen to accept this information that our planet is getting warmer due to our behavior, while others have chosen to deny this information as being fact. People have speculated reasons as to why so many people cannot believe this scientific information as being accurate. In the Wired article Kari Norgaard states that "Climate change is disturbing, It's something we don't want to think about. So what we do in our everyday lives is create a world where it's not there, and keep it distant." Norgaard informs us that certain companies even back the denial of climate effects and changes, one of those companies heading that is Exxon Mobile.  Going on he states that since we do not see the effects of climate changes in our everyday lives it then becomes less serious of an issue, despite the fact that all over the world that effects are being clearly seen. Greenhouse gasses were rising rapidly as a result of our burning of fossil fuels. It is being proclaimed now, by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) chairmen, that without change by 2012 that there is no turning back.

So since it can be so widely accepted as a truth and confirmed by scientists, why do a growing number of americans have such a difficulty believing it? Norgaard again states that "Our response to disturbing information is very complex. We negotiate it. We don't just take it in and respond in a rational way." Qualifying the facts on climate change as "disturbing information" seems a very accurate definition and it seems strange to think that which determines so much about our future is just being dismissed by people its level of disturbance. The journalist from Wired summed the interview up nicely at the end by saying "So we don’t want to believe climate change is happening, feel guilty that it is, and don’t know what to do about it? So we pretend it’s not a problem?" And it was these questions that boiled the content of Norgaard's interview. 

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/climate-psychology/

http://climatedenial.org/