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an effort to shape an initiative for curbing emissions would have a higher chance of success if it considered research showing which messages and incentives cause people to change, or resist change. “We must look at the reasons people are not acting in order to understand how to get people to act,” Janet Swim, a psychology professor at Penn State and the task force leader, said in a statement.What is ignored here is that the efforts of technocrats to seize greater control of society by controlling thought is based on nonsense, and this is obvious to a great many people. The whole notion that climate concerns can be mitigated by behavior changes in the general population is complete rubbish. The best that can result from such "actions" is a tiny delay of warming. To do something meaningful requires technological advances.The report reviews research on the behavioral element in every part of the climate problem — from consumer habits to the human tendency to give outsize importance to immediate costs even when confronted with evidence of big long-term risks. In essence, as this report and many previous studies show, the human mind appears to be set up in the worst possible way to grasp and act on global warming, which is one of those problems where the most damaging outcomes are somewhere and someday, not here and now. (My guess is that these tendencies are one reason we need to approach climate change and the energy gap more in the way we treat Medicare insolvency than the traditional environmental problems we grew up with back in the 20th century — sewage in rivers, smog in air — which were literally in your face.)
A better subject for the psycho babblers is to find ways to help technocrats - politicians, journalists and academics - gain a firmer grip on reality and mitigate their destructive impulses to control others.
Given that technological advances are needed a more constructive role for technocrats would be to highlight efforts in progress and near term opportunities for advancement. Putting more of our limited attention and modest genius to work on projects that have some hope of benefit would pay dividends that are orders of magnitude larger than efforts to clamp down on humanity.
Technocrats are the problem, not the solution. After all, it is their past efforts to inhibit technological advance - such as nuclear power - that created the current problems with GHGs from fossil fuels. It is well to remember that it is the short term thinking of dark siders - do anything to gain and hold power - that guarantees that their prescriptions will always and only be destructive of society and its necessarily longer term needs. It is also well to remember that they are totally out of touch with reality - all that matters are targets. That the targets are nonsensical is irrelevant to them so long as they have their marching orders and license to browbeat society in pursuit of meaningless targets. It's the browbeating that they desire. They're sick that way.
Technocrats, "it is their past efforts to inhibit technological advance - such as nuclear power - that created the current problems with GHGs from fossil fuels." I know great care is needed in order to discover workable human society, but gee whiz, if so-called progressive activists were to mass-produce brain imprints, they represent no more influence than basement bingo, a similarly discomforting frenzy, and neither crowd matter a twit compared to billions utterly uninformed and vulnerable to jingo from all sides.
So there is urgent work ahead, not all to be only smart technology, but also serious focus on calming a variety of argument and foment, an utter porridge of mostly silly ideology that, I agree here, has little benefit except for a coin and a headline. It's not ever going to be L or P in my lifetime for sure.
Plus, I think returning to staid bureaucracies sneering haughtily at industry and citizen alike is very unlikely. Haven't we all agreed to put that behind us?
Thankfully, there's proforma, easy enough to examine rationally, but we've also seen much distortion is put to raw numbers too. Restraints will not hurt us and nobody is recommending global presidium and brownsuit, er, technocrats.
Most post-crisis action will return to simple trade and dealing where benefits are discernible and concrete, no?
Posted by: Brian Hayes at August 6, 2009 04:35 PM"Haven't we all agreed to put that behind us? "
Not to my knowledge. It's more like a pendulum that swings to and fro, an eternal dialogue, or perhaps a split minded monologue as the social mind mutters to itself.
Perhaps I read too many academics neeping about arcana and mistake their teapot tempests for signs of approaching storms.
Move along, there's nothing to see here. It's just a noisy domestic disturbance and a little broken crockery.
Posted by: back40 at August 6, 2009 04:59 PMIntruding portents gathering on the hills. :-| Freaks me as well, and I carefully watch a thing called guile, often hiding as you know, in a thing called policy.
With little to outshine it, I watch game theory too, now much more than before, and try with all my might not to put faces on the math. This crash followed overconfidence, OK, but it just might junk the math. (Greenspan+ has already apologized, but narrowly and only for zeal and lazy reliance.) What then for markets if math fails magic?
Methinks it's not national governments nor central banks nor global blue chips to do it, but maybe 2000+ city states and their hinterland firms, more agile and more desperate. The ships are there, so to speak, the structure, the intermodal multinodal frame; perhaps more modern and responsive than ever before.
I shouldn't ramble.
Oh, almost forgot. You might enjoy this post by Mark Dow at CFR I think. He puts a wrap on our current pendulum and moans on our paradigm.
Posted by: Brian Hayes at August 6, 2009 06:06 PM