Wednesday, January 20, 2016
The Latest from Bill McKibben
Here's a recent piece that operates on the border between moral psychology, political strategy, and environmental ethics, by noted environmental writer Bill McKibben (who published the first popular book on global climate change, in 1988: The End of Nature). http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34465-how-to-stop-the-fossil-fuel-industry-from-wrecking-our-world
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One of the main reasons these fossil fuel companies, whether it be oil or natural gas or any other, is able to keep building pipelines and polluting our planet is because they are lining politicians pockets with huge amounts of cash. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of all the other pipelines listed in the article. I'm wondering why the Keystone XL pipeline made the news but not the others?
Of course, powerful interests have influence, and this perennial problem has been getting worse over the course of recent decades. Deeper than this piece of political economy, however, is an insight into moral psychology: humans tend to want to keep doing what they're good at, and what has worked out well for them in the past. There might not be all that much we can do about the influence of money in the short term, but we can surely think creatively about how to suborn change in the face of our natural inertia.
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