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Currently at Toronto Pearson: -3. High today: 5.
Whenever I look at an online article about climate change, I wonder whether there is an issue in the world where the general position of the internet noise machine is more at odds with the general position of the rest of the world. But then, I have no idea what the general position of the rest of the world is, only that there is an overwhelming media consensus in favour of the ideas that anthropogenic climate change has been occurring for some time, that it will accelerate if we don't do anything about it, and that it is likely to have disastrous effects if we don't do quite a lot about it.
We spent a week in this ethics class this term talking about the problem of ethical motivation with regard to climate change, based on a well-known paper by Stephen Gardiner called "A Perfect Moral Storm". Gardiner's line is that climate change is a "perfect moral storm" because our motivation to do anything about it is undermined by a whole bunch of things, including the obvious ones--uncertainty and coordination problems--but also "deeper" ones: the existential threat to our lifestyles (well, still obvious enough) and the very difficulty of doing anything about the problem--which implies that Gardiner's article itself may contribute to the problem, since it's supposed to show that our ethical motivation to do anything is even more deeply undermined than we think. I think it's even more deeply undermined than Gardiner thinks it is, because Gardiner still subscribes to the assumption that people are basically rational, in the narrow calculatingly self-interested sense. People's rationality in that sense fires up the prisoner's-dilemma-type problem that's the centrepiece of Gardiner's analysis. He points out that the coordination problem is worse than a standard prisoner's dilemma because the people negotiating don't actually have much if anything to gain by cooperating; cooperation primarily benefits people who don't exist yet. Maybe most importantly, cooperating produces no possible benefit for democratic politicians even considered collectively, since the good effects of cooperation and the bad effects of defection won't happen until after they're out of office.
I think this problem is worse than Gardiner makes it out to be, too: it is actually impossible for politicians to benefit from the good effects of action against climate change, even if they stayed in office forever, since the desired good effect is for nothing to happen. Nobody is going to congratulate you on achieving nothing. Effective action on climate change will literally be a thankless task. At least in the classic prisoner's dilemma situation, if you all cooperate, you know you're better off than you would have been if you all defected. With climate change, if you all cooperate, and there's no significant warming, then lots of people will take that as proof that there wasn't going to be any significant warming anyway. I was probably in my mid-teens when I noticed this asymmetry in my own motivations: I was strangely weakly motivated to do things that would make my parents unhappy if I didn't do them but wouldn't make them happy if I did them. This asymmetry is obviously irrational and extremely unhelpful, but I think it's very widespread if not universal, and, now that I think of it, it strikes me that it kind of fits together with what seems to me like the even bigger thing that undermines our motivation to do anything about climate change: we don't really mind if the disastrous effects actually happen. We get hurricanes and droughts and floods anyway, and we deal with them; if we get more of them, then we'll deal with them, too. Maybe more importantly, if we get them, then we'll have to deal with them. Before they happen, we don't have to deal with them, and we'd rather not, so we won't. It's the same kind of thing as "addressing the root causes of crime", or disease, or whatever, as opposed to dealing with it when it comes. You--whether you're a government responsible for a population or an individual responsible for yourself--don't have to do anything to prevent heart attacks, but you do have to do something about heart attacks when they happen. Doing something about heart attacks when they happen is necessary; doing something about them before they happen is optional. It doesn't matter that doing something about them before they happen may be less expensive (in financial and whatever other terms) than dealing with them after they happen; it's still discretionary before, and not after. And the kicker, as I see it, is that it isn't just that its being optional to do something about heart attacks before they happen lets you wriggle irrationally away. The fact that doing something you don't want to do is optional makes it more unpleasant to do it, and the fact that doing something you don't want to do (like, say, spend a month in the hospital) is necessary makes it less unpleasant to do it. In fact, dealing with disasters can be downright fun, or at least exciting, and of course give you a sense of purpose and all that World War II stuff. (This reminds me of the Joanna Russ story "Risk", in that Early September collection I stole from highschool.)
You may observe at this point that I seem to be running counter to the grounds of my irritation with The Maytrees. Possibly some people are motivated to ruin their lives, or at least to expose their lives to the risk of ruin--possibly, to some extent, more or less everyone is, though possibly some are more or less completely successful at overcoming this motivation--so that they can deal with the ruins.
And now, your Interesting Fact for the day: in 1991, there were 29,592 pig farms in Canada; these pig farms had a total of 10,216,083 pigs. In 2011, there were 7371 pig farms in Canada; these pig farms had a total of 12,679,104 pigs. (I recently signed up for StatsCan's daily RSS stats blast. Interesting Facts abound! (Also less interesting ones.) Today's were mostly about farms, which, generally, like pig farms but mostly not so extremely, are getting fewer in number and larger in size. This table is particularly remarkable: it shows a steady reduction in the number of farms in every size category except the very small and the extremely huge.)
Whenever I look at an online article about climate change, I wonder whether there is an issue in the world where the general position of the internet noise machine is more at odds with the general position of the rest of the world. But then, I have no idea what the general position of the rest of the world is, only that there is an overwhelming media consensus in favour of the ideas that anthropogenic climate change has been occurring for some time, that it will accelerate if we don't do anything about it, and that it is likely to have disastrous effects if we don't do quite a lot about it.
We spent a week in this ethics class this term talking about the problem of ethical motivation with regard to climate change, based on a well-known paper by Stephen Gardiner called "A Perfect Moral Storm". Gardiner's line is that climate change is a "perfect moral storm" because our motivation to do anything about it is undermined by a whole bunch of things, including the obvious ones--uncertainty and coordination problems--but also "deeper" ones: the existential threat to our lifestyles (well, still obvious enough) and the very difficulty of doing anything about the problem--which implies that Gardiner's article itself may contribute to the problem, since it's supposed to show that our ethical motivation to do anything is even more deeply undermined than we think. I think it's even more deeply undermined than Gardiner thinks it is, because Gardiner still subscribes to the assumption that people are basically rational, in the narrow calculatingly self-interested sense. People's rationality in that sense fires up the prisoner's-dilemma-type problem that's the centrepiece of Gardiner's analysis. He points out that the coordination problem is worse than a standard prisoner's dilemma because the people negotiating don't actually have much if anything to gain by cooperating; cooperation primarily benefits people who don't exist yet. Maybe most importantly, cooperating produces no possible benefit for democratic politicians even considered collectively, since the good effects of cooperation and the bad effects of defection won't happen until after they're out of office.
I think this problem is worse than Gardiner makes it out to be, too: it is actually impossible for politicians to benefit from the good effects of action against climate change, even if they stayed in office forever, since the desired good effect is for nothing to happen. Nobody is going to congratulate you on achieving nothing. Effective action on climate change will literally be a thankless task. At least in the classic prisoner's dilemma situation, if you all cooperate, you know you're better off than you would have been if you all defected. With climate change, if you all cooperate, and there's no significant warming, then lots of people will take that as proof that there wasn't going to be any significant warming anyway. I was probably in my mid-teens when I noticed this asymmetry in my own motivations: I was strangely weakly motivated to do things that would make my parents unhappy if I didn't do them but wouldn't make them happy if I did them. This asymmetry is obviously irrational and extremely unhelpful, but I think it's very widespread if not universal, and, now that I think of it, it strikes me that it kind of fits together with what seems to me like the even bigger thing that undermines our motivation to do anything about climate change: we don't really mind if the disastrous effects actually happen. We get hurricanes and droughts and floods anyway, and we deal with them; if we get more of them, then we'll deal with them, too. Maybe more importantly, if we get them, then we'll have to deal with them. Before they happen, we don't have to deal with them, and we'd rather not, so we won't. It's the same kind of thing as "addressing the root causes of crime", or disease, or whatever, as opposed to dealing with it when it comes. You--whether you're a government responsible for a population or an individual responsible for yourself--don't have to do anything to prevent heart attacks, but you do have to do something about heart attacks when they happen. Doing something about heart attacks when they happen is necessary; doing something about them before they happen is optional. It doesn't matter that doing something about them before they happen may be less expensive (in financial and whatever other terms) than dealing with them after they happen; it's still discretionary before, and not after. And the kicker, as I see it, is that it isn't just that its being optional to do something about heart attacks before they happen lets you wriggle irrationally away. The fact that doing something you don't want to do is optional makes it more unpleasant to do it, and the fact that doing something you don't want to do (like, say, spend a month in the hospital) is necessary makes it less unpleasant to do it. In fact, dealing with disasters can be downright fun, or at least exciting, and of course give you a sense of purpose and all that World War II stuff. (This reminds me of the Joanna Russ story "Risk", in that Early September collection I stole from highschool.)
You may observe at this point that I seem to be running counter to the grounds of my irritation with The Maytrees. Possibly some people are motivated to ruin their lives, or at least to expose their lives to the risk of ruin--possibly, to some extent, more or less everyone is, though possibly some are more or less completely successful at overcoming this motivation--so that they can deal with the ruins.
And now, your Interesting Fact for the day: in 1991, there were 29,592 pig farms in Canada; these pig farms had a total of 10,216,083 pigs. In 2011, there were 7371 pig farms in Canada; these pig farms had a total of 12,679,104 pigs. (I recently signed up for StatsCan's daily RSS stats blast. Interesting Facts abound! (Also less interesting ones.) Today's were mostly about farms, which, generally, like pig farms but mostly not so extremely, are getting fewer in number and larger in size. This table is particularly remarkable: it shows a steady reduction in the number of farms in every size category except the very small and the extremely huge.)
