[LINK] "Unpleasant Medicine"

[rfmcdonald]

Charlie Stross has written a post that pretty sums up my thinking on repairing the environment. We'll do it, we're capable of doing it, but we won't until we incentivize it.

There's a deeply embedded piece of primate behaviour, common to almost all of us: when someone shoves you, you shove right back. If you're being hammered with an unacceptable instruction, a very common response is denial or argument. And the louder the instruction is repeated, the more extreme the reaction.

For fifty years now we've been hearing warnings about pollution and resource depletion; for thirty years, about AGW and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Because these messages are interpreted as carrying an unpalatable payload (stop flying, stop driving, consume less, repent, sinner!) people stop listening and shove back, hard (drill, baby, drill!).

The solution should be fairly clear, and I'm probably displaying my own cognitive biases when I say that giving up on the environment isn't an option. But if action to reduce environmental impact is desirable, then it needs to be framed in terms that don't threaten the intended audience, but promise rewards for behavioural change. Instead of us all consuming less, we're going to consume differently and make huge profits off environmental energy. Instead of being punished for dumping waste, we're going to make money from recycling. Played right, a shift to a sustainable economy should see a net increase in wealth because the wealth-producing activities shift with the demand for sustainability. Hair shirt puritanism is not only unnecessary; it's positively damaging to our future, and I wish the greens would drop it right now.