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listened to a podcast I found interesting about why it's difficult/impossible for people to deal w/ climate change
bottom line the two takeaway ideas were,...
@15m24s
...You spend some time talking with Daniel Kahneman the famous psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics and he actually presented a very pessimistic view that we would actually [NOT] come to terms with the threat of climate change
He said to me that we are as humans, are very poor dealing with issues in the future,... we tend to be very focused on the short term,... we tend to "discount" would be the economic term,... to reduce the value of things happening in the future the further away they are.
He says we are very cost adverse,... that is to say when there are rewards we respond strongly BUT when there's a cost we prefer to push it away,... just as you know when I'm by myself which I leave until the very last minute (like in my tax return, I mean you just don't want to deal with these things).
And he says we're reluctant to deal with uncertainty.
If things are uncertain OR we perceive them to be,... people say well come back and tell me when we're certain.
What he said to me was in his view the climate change is the worst possible combination because it's not only uncertain BUT it's also in the future AND involves costs.
@21m36s
...So George there obviously is one domain in life where you can see people constantly placing the sacred values above their selfish self interest,.... you know I'm thinking here about the many many religions we have in the world that get people to do all kinds of things that an economist would say is not in that rational self interest.
People give up food people give up water people have you know suffer enormous personal privations people sometimes choose chastity for life I mean huge costs that people are willing to bear and they're not doing it because someone says at the end of the year are I'm going to give you an extra 200 bucks in your paycheck or an extra $2000 in your paycheck they're doing it because they believe these are sacred values that are not negotiable.
Losing Alaska
As floods, wildfires, and heatwaves hit many parts of the world, signs of climate change seem to be all around us. Scientists have been warning us for years ...
bottom line the two takeaway ideas were,...
@15m24s
...You spend some time talking with Daniel Kahneman the famous psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics and he actually presented a very pessimistic view that we would actually [NOT] come to terms with the threat of climate change
He said to me that we are as humans, are very poor dealing with issues in the future,... we tend to be very focused on the short term,... we tend to "discount" would be the economic term,... to reduce the value of things happening in the future the further away they are.
He says we are very cost adverse,... that is to say when there are rewards we respond strongly BUT when there's a cost we prefer to push it away,... just as you know when I'm by myself which I leave until the very last minute (like in my tax return, I mean you just don't want to deal with these things).
And he says we're reluctant to deal with uncertainty.
If things are uncertain OR we perceive them to be,... people say well come back and tell me when we're certain.
What he said to me was in his view the climate change is the worst possible combination because it's not only uncertain BUT it's also in the future AND involves costs.
@21m36s
...So George there obviously is one domain in life where you can see people constantly placing the sacred values above their selfish self interest,.... you know I'm thinking here about the many many religions we have in the world that get people to do all kinds of things that an economist would say is not in that rational self interest.
People give up food people give up water people have you know suffer enormous personal privations people sometimes choose chastity for life I mean huge costs that people are willing to bear and they're not doing it because someone says at the end of the year are I'm going to give you an extra 200 bucks in your paycheck or an extra $2000 in your paycheck they're doing it because they believe these are sacred values that are not negotiable.