It is well known that the fossil-fuel industry has spent millions for many years seeding doubts about climate science, as documented in Naomi Oreskes book, Merchants of Doubt. But later, she discovered that electric utilities started a big propaganda campaign…
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Yuval Noah Harari says a simple story can save the planet
NYT: It’s important to have human enemies in order to have a catchy story. With climate change, you don’t. Our minds didn’t evolve for this kind of story. When we evolved as hunter-gatherers, it was never the case that we…
Posted in Environment
You can’t get no satisfaction from reducing your own personal carbon footprint.
Almost all moral reasoning concerns ideas about how we treat one another (including other sentient beings). Hence, what is moral depends upon what other people do. Driving on the right side of a busy highway is moral (and driving on…
We need a better concept of collective morality to be able to deal with climate change
Suppose God told you that you would go to hell if the median human faith of humanity is insufficient when you die. If the median faith of humanity is good enough, then everyone goes to heaven, but if not, than…
Posted in Environment, Philosophy and ethics
The political economy of global warming
Updated December 14, 2019 Here are three views of the Chicago skyline. The top photo is a rare day with high air pollution in the 1990s, but that was a typical scene in the 1970s and the third is how…
Posted in Environment, Globalization & International
The economics of global warming
Economists are not trained in climate science, so we can’t say how much carbon dioxide will warm the planet, but economics is an important part of climate policy–this is our collective response to the threat of global warming. How much…
Posted in Environment, Globalization & International
How climate skeptics are distributed across America
The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has data about public perceptions on the facts of global warming. As of 2018, almost twice as many Americans believe global warming is caused by humans as those who disagree (57% to…
Posted in Environment
Medianism 