No use in crying wolf… there are better ways
Sir Martin Wolf searching to explain why the world seems not to be responding as it should to the growing threats of climate change, places the responsibility for it with the individuals saying “if they are to tolerate radical change in the energy use, people must first be frightened and then they must be offered a easy way out”, “Why the climate change wolf is so hard to kill off” December 5.
Although this basic premise sounds right, and should be right, unfortunately it is not right, and so if we sit for that fright and that easy way out to happen, we will all chop down our last tree, just the way we did on Easter Island.
I people knew it was very dangerous to smoke, I people was never offered an easy way out, it took two years of hell, but I people did it because the opportunity costs of not quitting, namely the nagging from wife and daughters, was just too big for any macho man to endure. In similar fashion many governments have managed to come up with ways of how to impose very high petrol taxes on their voters just because the incentives of fiscal earnings were very high.
And so, what is truly needed to get results on climate change is to align the incentives and empower the agents of change. For instance if you want to reduce the use of cars in the US, which is an environmental must, let local authorities auction off public transport monopolies and thereby enlist bus manufacturers and bus drivers in the army fighting climate change.
Wives and daughters (leaders of the world)… get us working on the climate change… you like heat even less than we do.
Although this basic premise sounds right, and should be right, unfortunately it is not right, and so if we sit for that fright and that easy way out to happen, we will all chop down our last tree, just the way we did on Easter Island.
I people knew it was very dangerous to smoke, I people was never offered an easy way out, it took two years of hell, but I people did it because the opportunity costs of not quitting, namely the nagging from wife and daughters, was just too big for any macho man to endure. In similar fashion many governments have managed to come up with ways of how to impose very high petrol taxes on their voters just because the incentives of fiscal earnings were very high.
And so, what is truly needed to get results on climate change is to align the incentives and empower the agents of change. For instance if you want to reduce the use of cars in the US, which is an environmental must, let local authorities auction off public transport monopolies and thereby enlist bus manufacturers and bus drivers in the army fighting climate change.
Wives and daughters (leaders of the world)… get us working on the climate change… you like heat even less than we do.
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