8 ms·

As I wrote in HN's dialog about a New York Magazine article on global warming https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id

by spodek 10y ago

As I wrote in HN's dialog about a New York Magazine article on global warming https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471815: As usual, nothing about prevention. Global temperatures and the sea level are rising because of human behavior. If we want different results, we have to behave differently. Engineers and scientists know engineering and science but not so much leading people to change their behavior. It's easy to blame others: "Listen to me! If you don't you'll be sorry!" isn't effective. Also, what fraction of engineers and scientists have, say, flown in a plane or something similarly polluting in the past twelve months? If you want to change behavior, you need to learn and practice leadership skills and apply them to yourself as well as others. The science is clear. More is nice and I agree we should keep pursuing it, but the best way to decrease the effects of global warming is to change our behavior. (This is why I moved from science to leadership.) This article's writing about flood-proof architecture and other rearranging-deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic behavior is necessary since it's too late to stop a lot of change, but it's not too late to stop the change that we -- you and I -- are contributing to now. As much as I wish past generations had changed their behaviors so we wouldn't see these problems today, future generations will wish we had changed our behavior today. Even if you don't have kids or grandkids, I would think caring about human society in general and empathy and compassion for future generations would be enough to focus on changing our behavior proactively, not just reactively fixing problems others bequeathed to us.

themartorana 10y ago
Would you like to give some examples of the leadership in behavioral change you'd like to see? I personally doubt anything save huge taxes on gasoline are going to do anything to change behavior. You can decry driving by people still need to get to work. Laws are the only drivers of change so massive. We're fighting over oil pipelines to pump more oil for use, not which green energy gets tax breaks. And even with outrageous prices caused by taxes meant to make dangerous activity prohibitive, people still smoke. Cash-for-clunkers-for-EV? "Infrastructure spending" in EV charging nationwide? Federally supported replacement of coal fired power plants? People aren't going to change behavior at all because of flooding except for maybe those people under water. But they'll just move.
- spodek 10y ago
  I think government will change slowly so I expect laws will follow social change. People born today will have to face the environmental change that past generations heard would happen but they knew they'd die before the worst of it. As an increasing percent of the population cares, and can see the change, we'll see change anyway, maybe people will see SUVs and flying all the time like smoking. I don't know politics, so I don't know how easy legislative change would be, but reducing subsidies to polluting industries would help. We spend billions on meat, dairy, and the corn to sustain it that pollute a lot. Also, accounting for externalities of pollution that private firms cause but the public has to deal with. Personally, I'm more interested in helping change public views, seeing how it changed so much with smoking.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    The problem is that with climate change we need to be on an accelerated timeframe. We can't just wait for social change to happen naturally over the course of another generation or two.
  - legutierr 10y ago
    If you don't know politics, then maybe you should learn, because the solution you are looking for is entirely political. That is to say, the solution is the creation of economic incentives that can only be structured and imposed through government power. Yes, people need to believe that the effects of climate change will affect their lives. Laws do follow social change, in that laws that go against entrenched special interests cannot be passed unless failing to pass them becomes entirely unacceptable to a significant majority of the voting population. But you are tilting at windmills if you think that convincing people to change their behaviors unilaterally is going to make any difference in climate change. Let's say I'm one of those people who gets on a plane every week to meet with clients. I'm not going to stop doing that because I feel an ethical obligation to prevent climate change; if I did stop, I would just be giving up that business to my competition who doesn't have any of my ethical compunctions. You are also asking too much from ordinary people if you expect them to modify their personal consumption decisions. Maybe you can get people (in the first world) to stop eating so many hamburgers because beef production is so carbon intensive. Maybe you can get people (again, in the first world) to drive hybrid cars. But how many people are you going to convince of the overriding ethics of your position such that they will act against their own self interest (economic, cultural, social, familial)? Not enough to do what is necessary. And even those people who accept and follow these ethics are not going to have the detailed information required to make environmentally-friendly decisions throughout their lives. It's the same problem experienced with command economies: without a reliable price signal to base purchasing decisions on, counter-productive decisions (decisions that result in more carbon pollution instead of less) will be common. The only behavioral solution to climate change is a universal carbon tax (which would of course supersede any current carbon subsidies that would need to be repealed). Only a carbon tax will allow corporations to reduce their carbon footprint without worrying about giving ground to their competition. Only a carbon tax will cause ordinary consumers to change their behavior without expecting them to completely re-vamp their ideologies and value systems. And a carbon tax can only be implemented politically. You site smoking as an example of how focusing on changing public views can be effective. Look at the history, though. Although there had been a gradual long-term decline in adult smoking, student smoking had been climbing significantly in the US until 1998 [0], when a settlement between the tobacco companies and 46 state governments forced the tobacco companies to basically abandon the US market [1]. This demonstrates both that the demand for smoking was being propped up by corporate propaganda, and that only activism with an agenda focused on a specific litigation strategy was ever going to be effective at fighting it. The other great example is the civil rights movement in the US. Did Martin Luther King set out to end racism in the United States? No, social change at that level would have been laughable. Civil rights leaders had very specific legislative and judicial objectives: to end state tolerance of segregation, guarantee universal suffrage, end ensure de facto equal treatment of blacks under the law. All of the activism, outreach, protest, and public-relations efforts were orchestrated and timed to maximize their effect on those specific outcomes. Broad changes in public attitudes towards race have distantly lagged the legislative and litigative successes of the civil rights movements; I believe that it was changes in the law that created the space required for attitudes to change. Leadership is essential, but the kind of leadership we need is leadership that organizes people around narrow, actionable, and feasible legislative and judicial objectives. You are right to identify "reducing subsidies to polluting industries" as a worthwhile political objective, as well as "accounting for externalities of pollution". If you count yourself a leader fighting climate change, though, these policies cannot just be something that other people worry about. They need to be the specific and central focus of your entire effort. [0] http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/ http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig... [1] http://publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/tobacco-control/tobacco-control-litigation/master-settlement-agreement http://publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/tobacco-control/toba...
616c 10y ago
I too would like to see examples from your site. Does your book on mental models relate to this topic beyond surface relationships?
- spodek 10y ago
  That book is unrelated to the environment. It's about developing the skill of changing mental models in general through an exercise of writing them out and seeing how they work. I have deep passions for teaching leadership and for reducing pollution. Professionally, I have decided to focus on teaching leadership for now so I write a lot less on pollution, though I continue to refine my personal behavior, for example http://joshuaspodek.com/wasting-waste http://joshuaspodek.com/wasting-waste and http://joshuaspodek.com/living-with-integrity-means-considering-the-results-of-your-actions-on-other-people http://joshuaspodek.com/living-with-integrity-means-consider... and links within.
  - 616c 10y ago
    Thanks, I'll take a look. I live in a region of the Middle East that is more part of the problem than the solution I recycle, because we are in a city upon a hill type project, but others laugh at me and see it as pointless. I drive, sadly, but try to minimize it and do multiple errands in one circuit of a trip. Public transportation here is almost non-existent, and the average temp in the summer is over 40 degrees Celsius (no, not a typo). Local political activism is virtually non-existent, and dissenting opinion is punished. There is no local awareness, especially outside our project campus, or support for environmentally friendly policy. The government says otherwise, but minimal top-down politics changes nothing for anyone beyond the narrative. What is the plan for people like me in regions like this? I see I live in the world majority of developing local economy, global indifference. "You Westerners had your Industrial Revolution, now it's our turn" is hard to counter as the world regime in talks and accords seems to passively prove this true.
    - selimthegrim 10y ago
      You are at KAUST?
overloaded 10y ago
"Engineers and scientists know engineering and science but not so much leading people to change their behavior." Yes, I'd rather think that's by design. The climatologists and scientists who have spent decades warning people of the dangers, constantly, spending their lives wandering the corners of the earth collecting evidence, getting ignored and ostracized by private industry, by backwards-looking governments at local, state, and federal levels, who have to deal with the public mocking of their life's work with drive-by "snow this winter? how about that global warming" op-ed cartoons; their job is to also perform the legislative and urban-planning-related feats to stop it all? Do you think that's a reasonable spread of responsibility?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
3pt14159 10y ago
I know this sounds a bit Ayn Rand, but almost all scientists, engineers, and computer scientists know that global warming is real and is happening. Can we not just all go on strike until the dumb or greedy people get shoved aside? Like, granted, there was some pretty effective misinformation back in 2008, but the science is completely settled now. The public benefits from our medicines and software and infrastructure and from our higher than normal taxes, but they don't trust us when it comes to changing their behaviour. Like I'm at my wits end when I talk to climate change deniers these days.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  I've thought about the strike thing for sometime also, why do we keep propping these people up? The kind of action you're describing is inevitable IMO. Humans may have to go on mass strike until we get the correct Government action on climate change. Sadly, strikes might not even be required/optional soon due to impacted health from rising temperatures, air pollution and difficulty commuting. I'm currently living in Amsterdam now, it's Autumn and it's as hot as Sydney in summer, 30+ C. Bridges are getting stuck and stopping trams which then need to be hosed down with cool water constantly to keep them from ceasing up etc, little things like this along will have a major impact on everyone's pockets and forget getting a good nights sleep in an apartment which is designed for temperatures no higher than 24C. Goodbye productivity. In the middle of heatwaves in Sydney (reaching 40+ celsius), I've watched people struggling on trains that are delayed due to issues with infrastructure, robbed of proper sleep from the extreme temperatures, heading off to participate in jobs, supporting industries which are clearly the cause of our sleepless nights (major banks, energy resource companies etc). I often would think to myself, why bother? If the end goal is such devastating destruction and suffering? Why not stop and get out priorities straight before getting back to work? Economies are great, jobs are awesome, fossil fuels and deforestation isn't and they're no longer required to run a model civilization and healthy economy.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Why do you mention the heatwaves? Do you have evidence they are related to climate change? I think it only changes temperatures by a few Celsius.
mikeash 10y ago
I don't understand the emphasis on air travel I frequently see in these discussions. Passenger planes are much more fuel efficient per passenger-mile than single-occupancy cars. Most people drive far more miles alone each year than they travel by plane. It makes no sense to me to criticize someone for flying a couple thousand miles at ~100MPG when the average American drives 12,000 miles per year at ~25MPG. Beyond that, I don't see how refraining from individually polluting activities will help to enact the laws and treaties we need to make a real difference. It's a collective action problem, and those aren't solved by having individuals with strong beliefs alter their own habits to match what they want, they're solved by having individuals with strong beliefs convince everybody to change their habits.
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- hammock 10y ago
  Same thing happens when people see a city bus spewing black smoke from it's exhaust pipe, without realizing that that bus is currently taking the place of 20 or more cars.
  - Decade 10y ago
    Not the bus that roars past my window at midnight every night.
    - patall 10y ago
      That´s true. The bus at night is (or should be) there to prevent drunk drivers.
- cleaver 10y ago
  The one that gets me is the suggestion that direct flights are more efficient. Sure, if you go from New York to Los Angeles, but it wouldn't make sense if you were headed to a smaller city away from a major centre. With millions to be saved, I'm sure airlines do a decent job of working out the most efficient combination of large direct flights and smaller commuter planes. I don't think a 3/4 empty 767 to Fargo is the way to go. If you want to take it to an extreme, imagine if the post office only delivered your mail point-to-point in the interest of efficiency.
rayiner 10y ago
How many scientists and engineers live in a suburban McMansion and drive an SUV? Individual behavior changes aren't going to fix this problem. Nothing will. It's a forest fire that will just run its course.
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  I agree fully. I think many misunderstand human nature. You know whats even easier to stop than global warming? war, and no one has stopped that since the dawn of man.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    Why do you think war is easier to stop than global warming?
- justin66 10y ago
  In other words, it's a collective action problem. It's not as if those never get solved.
graeme 10y ago
I think the real situation is more depressing than that. Behavioural change won't matter unless the whole world does it. The rate of new global carbon emissions is increasing. This is despite any efforts to be greener or more renewable by individuals or institutions. Why? Because there's demand for fossil fuels, it's legal to produce it. How will changing individual behaviour in the west reduce global emissions or even slow their rate of growth? (Am assuming you're western) I'm being a bit too pessimistic of course. If individuals in the west create demand for technologies that work better than fossil fuels, then we could reduce global emissions. So behavioural changes could help with that. But as long as carbon benefits some places that need energy, it will be used. That's at least what we've seen over the past 30 years the world has focussed on reducing annual carbon emissions. They've increased instead.
- kilotaras 10y ago
  > This is despite any efforts to be greener or more renewable by individuals or institutions. What efforts? Big part of emission reducing by west is simply moving production to devleoping countries.

by spodek 10y ago

themartorana 10y ago

Would you like to give some examples of the leadership in behavioral change you'd like to see? I personally doubt anything save huge taxes on gasoline are going to do anything to change behavior. You can decry driving by people still need to get to work. Laws are the only drivers of change so massive. We're fighting over oil pipelines to pump more oil for use, not which green energy gets tax breaks. And even with outrageous prices caused by taxes meant to make dangerous activity prohibitive, people still smoke. Cash-for-clunkers-for-EV? "Infrastructure spending" in EV charging nationwide? Federally supported replacement of coal fired power plants? People aren't going to change behavior at all because of flooding except for maybe those people under water. But they'll just move.

spodek 10y ago
I think government will change slowly so I expect laws will follow social change. People born today will have to face the environmental change that past generations heard would happen but they knew they'd die before the worst of it. As an increasing percent of the population cares, and can see the change, we'll see change anyway, maybe people will see SUVs and flying all the time like smoking. I don't know politics, so I don't know how easy legislative change would be, but reducing subsidies to polluting industries would help. We spend billions on meat, dairy, and the corn to sustain it that pollute a lot. Also, accounting for externalities of pollution that private firms cause but the public has to deal with. Personally, I'm more interested in helping change public views, seeing how it changed so much with smoking.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  The problem is that with climate change we need to be on an accelerated timeframe. We can't just wait for social change to happen naturally over the course of another generation or two.
- legutierr 10y ago
  If you don't know politics, then maybe you should learn, because the solution you are looking for is entirely political. That is to say, the solution is the creation of economic incentives that can only be structured and imposed through government power. Yes, people need to believe that the effects of climate change will affect their lives. Laws do follow social change, in that laws that go against entrenched special interests cannot be passed unless failing to pass them becomes entirely unacceptable to a significant majority of the voting population. But you are tilting at windmills if you think that convincing people to change their behaviors unilaterally is going to make any difference in climate change. Let's say I'm one of those people who gets on a plane every week to meet with clients. I'm not going to stop doing that because I feel an ethical obligation to prevent climate change; if I did stop, I would just be giving up that business to my competition who doesn't have any of my ethical compunctions. You are also asking too much from ordinary people if you expect them to modify their personal consumption decisions. Maybe you can get people (in the first world) to stop eating so many hamburgers because beef production is so carbon intensive. Maybe you can get people (again, in the first world) to drive hybrid cars. But how many people are you going to convince of the overriding ethics of your position such that they will act against their own self interest (economic, cultural, social, familial)? Not enough to do what is necessary. And even those people who accept and follow these ethics are not going to have the detailed information required to make environmentally-friendly decisions throughout their lives. It's the same problem experienced with command economies: without a reliable price signal to base purchasing decisions on, counter-productive decisions (decisions that result in more carbon pollution instead of less) will be common. The only behavioral solution to climate change is a universal carbon tax (which would of course supersede any current carbon subsidies that would need to be repealed). Only a carbon tax will allow corporations to reduce their carbon footprint without worrying about giving ground to their competition. Only a carbon tax will cause ordinary consumers to change their behavior without expecting them to completely re-vamp their ideologies and value systems. And a carbon tax can only be implemented politically. You site smoking as an example of how focusing on changing public views can be effective. Look at the history, though. Although there had been a gradual long-term decline in adult smoking, student smoking had been climbing significantly in the US until 1998 [0], when a settlement between the tobacco companies and 46 state governments forced the tobacco companies to basically abandon the US market [1]. This demonstrates both that the demand for smoking was being propped up by corporate propaganda, and that only activism with an agenda focused on a specific litigation strategy was ever going to be effective at fighting it. The other great example is the civil rights movement in the US. Did Martin Luther King set out to end racism in the United States? No, social change at that level would have been laughable. Civil rights leaders had very specific legislative and judicial objectives: to end state tolerance of segregation, guarantee universal suffrage, end ensure de facto equal treatment of blacks under the law. All of the activism, outreach, protest, and public-relations efforts were orchestrated and timed to maximize their effect on those specific outcomes. Broad changes in public attitudes towards race have distantly lagged the legislative and litigative successes of the civil rights movements; I believe that it was changes in the law that created the space required for attitudes to change. Leadership is essential, but the kind of leadership we need is leadership that organizes people around narrow, actionable, and feasible legislative and judicial objectives. You are right to identify "reducing subsidies to polluting industries" as a worthwhile political objective, as well as "accounting for externalities of pollution". If you count yourself a leader fighting climate change, though, these policies cannot just be something that other people worry about. They need to be the specific and central focus of your entire effort. [0] http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/ http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig... [1] http://publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/tobacco-control/tobacco-control-litigation/master-settlement-agreement http://publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/tobacco-control/toba...

616c 10y ago

I too would like to see examples from your site. Does your book on mental models relate to this topic beyond surface relationships?

spodek 10y ago
That book is unrelated to the environment. It's about developing the skill of changing mental models in general through an exercise of writing them out and seeing how they work. I have deep passions for teaching leadership and for reducing pollution. Professionally, I have decided to focus on teaching leadership for now so I write a lot less on pollution, though I continue to refine my personal behavior, for example http://joshuaspodek.com/wasting-waste http://joshuaspodek.com/wasting-waste and http://joshuaspodek.com/living-with-integrity-means-considering-the-results-of-your-actions-on-other-people http://joshuaspodek.com/living-with-integrity-means-consider... and links within.
- 616c 10y ago
  Thanks, I'll take a look. I live in a region of the Middle East that is more part of the problem than the solution I recycle, because we are in a city upon a hill type project, but others laugh at me and see it as pointless. I drive, sadly, but try to minimize it and do multiple errands in one circuit of a trip. Public transportation here is almost non-existent, and the average temp in the summer is over 40 degrees Celsius (no, not a typo). Local political activism is virtually non-existent, and dissenting opinion is punished. There is no local awareness, especially outside our project campus, or support for environmentally friendly policy. The government says otherwise, but minimal top-down politics changes nothing for anyone beyond the narrative. What is the plan for people like me in regions like this? I see I live in the world majority of developing local economy, global indifference. "You Westerners had your Industrial Revolution, now it's our turn" is hard to counter as the world regime in talks and accords seems to passively prove this true.
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    You are at KAUST?

overloaded 10y ago

"Engineers and scientists know engineering and science but not so much leading people to change their behavior." Yes, I'd rather think that's by design. The climatologists and scientists who have spent decades warning people of the dangers, constantly, spending their lives wandering the corners of the earth collecting evidence, getting ignored and ostracized by private industry, by backwards-looking governments at local, state, and federal levels, who have to deal with the public mocking of their life's work with drive-by "snow this winter? how about that global warming" op-ed cartoons; their job is to also perform the legislative and urban-planning-related feats to stop it all? Do you think that's a reasonable spread of responsibility?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

3pt14159 10y ago

I know this sounds a bit Ayn Rand, but almost all scientists, engineers, and computer scientists know that global warming is real and is happening. Can we not just all go on strike until the dumb or greedy people get shoved aside? Like, granted, there was some pretty effective misinformation back in 2008, but the science is completely settled now. The public benefits from our medicines and software and infrastructure and from our higher than normal taxes, but they don't trust us when it comes to changing their behaviour. Like I'm at my wits end when I talk to climate change deniers these days.

pmyjavec 10y ago
I've thought about the strike thing for sometime also, why do we keep propping these people up? The kind of action you're describing is inevitable IMO. Humans may have to go on mass strike until we get the correct Government action on climate change. Sadly, strikes might not even be required/optional soon due to impacted health from rising temperatures, air pollution and difficulty commuting. I'm currently living in Amsterdam now, it's Autumn and it's as hot as Sydney in summer, 30+ C. Bridges are getting stuck and stopping trams which then need to be hosed down with cool water constantly to keep them from ceasing up etc, little things like this along will have a major impact on everyone's pockets and forget getting a good nights sleep in an apartment which is designed for temperatures no higher than 24C. Goodbye productivity. In the middle of heatwaves in Sydney (reaching 40+ celsius), I've watched people struggling on trains that are delayed due to issues with infrastructure, robbed of proper sleep from the extreme temperatures, heading off to participate in jobs, supporting industries which are clearly the cause of our sleepless nights (major banks, energy resource companies etc). I often would think to myself, why bother? If the end goal is such devastating destruction and suffering? Why not stop and get out priorities straight before getting back to work? Economies are great, jobs are awesome, fossil fuels and deforestation isn't and they're no longer required to run a model civilization and healthy economy.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Why do you mention the heatwaves? Do you have evidence they are related to climate change? I think it only changes temperatures by a few Celsius.

mikeash 10y ago

I don't understand the emphasis on air travel I frequently see in these discussions. Passenger planes are much more fuel efficient per passenger-mile than single-occupancy cars. Most people drive far more miles alone each year than they travel by plane. It makes no sense to me to criticize someone for flying a couple thousand miles at ~100MPG when the average American drives 12,000 miles per year at ~25MPG. Beyond that, I don't see how refraining from individually polluting activities will help to enact the laws and treaties we need to make a real difference. It's a collective action problem, and those aren't solved by having individuals with strong beliefs alter their own habits to match what they want, they're solved by having individuals with strong beliefs convince everybody to change their habits.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hammock 10y ago
Same thing happens when people see a city bus spewing black smoke from it's exhaust pipe, without realizing that that bus is currently taking the place of 20 or more cars.
- Decade 10y ago
  Not the bus that roars past my window at midnight every night.
  - patall 10y ago
    That´s true. The bus at night is (or should be) there to prevent drunk drivers.
cleaver 10y ago
The one that gets me is the suggestion that direct flights are more efficient. Sure, if you go from New York to Los Angeles, but it wouldn't make sense if you were headed to a smaller city away from a major centre. With millions to be saved, I'm sure airlines do a decent job of working out the most efficient combination of large direct flights and smaller commuter planes. I don't think a 3/4 empty 767 to Fargo is the way to go. If you want to take it to an extreme, imagine if the post office only delivered your mail point-to-point in the interest of efficiency.

rayiner 10y ago

How many scientists and engineers live in a suburban McMansion and drive an SUV? Individual behavior changes aren't going to fix this problem. Nothing will. It's a forest fire that will just run its course.

Mendenhall 10y ago
I agree fully. I think many misunderstand human nature. You know whats even easier to stop than global warming? war, and no one has stopped that since the dawn of man.
- kaybe 10y ago
  Why do you think war is easier to stop than global warming?
justin66 10y ago
In other words, it's a collective action problem. It's not as if those never get solved.

graeme 10y ago

I think the real situation is more depressing than that. Behavioural change won't matter unless the whole world does it. The rate of new global carbon emissions is increasing. This is despite any efforts to be greener or more renewable by individuals or institutions. Why? Because there's demand for fossil fuels, it's legal to produce it. How will changing individual behaviour in the west reduce global emissions or even slow their rate of growth? (Am assuming you're western) I'm being a bit too pessimistic of course. If individuals in the west create demand for technologies that work better than fossil fuels, then we could reduce global emissions. So behavioural changes could help with that. But as long as carbon benefits some places that need energy, it will be used. That's at least what we've seen over the past 30 years the world has focussed on reducing annual carbon emissions. They've increased instead.

kilotaras 10y ago
> This is despite any efforts to be greener or more renewable by individuals or institutions. What efforts? Big part of emission reducing by west is simply moving production to devleoping countries.