Comments on: Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 4: Political-economic context

By: Lessons learned on energy and the oil spill? « Global Change

Lessons learned on energy and the oil spill? « Global Change — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:13:13 +0000

[...] also shouldn’t be surprised that money and political power are defining the narrative at the moment. In my opinion, the only force large enough to overcome entrenched [...]

By: Can the Gulf Coast situation get any worse? Significance of the oil spill, part II « Global Change

Mon, 31 May 2010 03:40:24 +0000

[...] I’m pretty pessimistic these days. I’m not sure if anything short of a severe economic energy shock that hits ordinary people hard—similar to what we saw in 2006-2007—will bring us to a tipping point. If the U.S. returns to $4-5/gallon gasoline and home heating oil, we will start seeing environmentalists, security hawks, the energy independence crowd, green jobs advocates, and everyday citizens realign once again. Only then will there be a coalition large and loud enough to force Washington take on the political-economic might of the fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists. [...]

By: What are green energy investors waiting for? « Global Change

What are green energy investors waiting for? « Global Change — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:54:15 +0000

[...] If Al Gore and others are correct that we already have available the kinds of renewable energy technology needed to decarbonize the economy, why is it taking so long to do so? As we saw in an earlier post, part of the answer is carbon lock in resulting from our modern political economy. [...]

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:36:33 +0000

It’s an interesting point that’s at the heart of the debate about environmentalism and climate warming messaging right now. To what extent should hope be a central message? This is the argument that Schellenberger and Nordhaus have made—people need to be inspired and hopeful. Paul Hawken has said (and I’m paraphrasing here because I can’t remember exactly) that if you’re not pessimistic, then you’re not in tune with what science is saying, but if you’re not hopeful, then you’re not looking at all of the great ideas and capacity for change that people are generating.

One might argue that it’s a fine line. It’s good to identify solutions that engender real hope—and then pursue them. On the other hand, it may not be useful if a sense of hope is conflated with the ease of accomplishing this task. Hope does not mean easy. It’s going to be hard work transitioning to a decarbonized economy. So it seems like we need a spirit of persistence and hopefulness….and a reminder of Hawken’s two-sided coin.

By: Why don’t people engage climate change? Part 5: A perfect storm of climate change denial « Global Change

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:16:51 +0000

[...] Problem 4—Political-economic context: The enormous inertia built into techno-institutional complexes and the huge sums of power and money exchanged by politicians and the fossil fuel industry ensure that there will be constituencies at the highest levels of government who deny warming and fight mitigation. [...]

By: robert

robert — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:52:45 +0000

I immediately thought of this post when I heard a portion of this segment on Living On Earth: God’s Green Earth http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00045&segmentID=1

I often wonder what goes on in people’s religious minds, what their drive is to believe in the mythologies. This simple segment about religion, marketing, and human psychology was very interesting. Since I was making pizza at home with family, etc… I could not digest the entire piece but was struck with this passage:

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YOUNG: Hmmm, carbon sinners.

PALMER: Carbon sinners. They are very good at making us feel guilty they’re very good at fear. The trouble is they’re not very good at hope, salvation, liberation, redemption, and they’re appallingly bad at celebrating.

YOUNG: Well, I got to say when you talk about climate change it’s hard to see cause for celebration in this. I mean it’s a pretty gloomy outlook.

(ARC /Richard Stonehouse)

PALMER: Well, it is and it isn’t. You see, if there is nothing to celebrate, why would you bother? And the faiths are the oldest institutions in the world – they know more about how human psychology works than any other organization, which is why they’ve outlived every dynasty, every empire, they’ve outlived Communism pretty much, they’ve outlived the League of Nations, and as we gently point out to our colleagues in the UN, they will outlive the UN.

Now, how do they do this? They do this because they know that you can ask people to fast and you can ask them to repent, and then you feast. You have to fast and feast. If all you tell people they can do is fast, they give up. You’ve got to give people hope.

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Thoughts?