Our response to covid has a lot of bad implications for the fight against climate change, a far tougher collective action problem. Among the worst is the exposure of "trust the science" as a kind of secular faith, not a genuine defense of scientific thinking. This took many forms
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Climate science is far more complex than virology, the time scales are too long, the field is by necessity full of guesswork, and the only effective interventions have to be transnational. Our political system and our journalists are not up to the task of getting this right
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Step one of somehow fixing this has to be communicating the core idea of science—that you repeatedly change your mind based on evidence (or lack of evidence!), that you do this rigorously, and that finding out you were wrong about something is a sign that you're winning
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Realistically, though, it's time to start thinking harder about climate mitigation and be more honest in communicating the inevitability of what is coming. Say goodbye to Miami and hello to Canadian beach vacations. Maybe fund some weird science projects at large scale.
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Space mirror, ocean seeding, reforestation, mass electrification, setting off a volcano or two—we should go to town. Humanity can at least go out with a bang, and we have a much better shot at solutions that involve building things than ones that require restraining ourselves
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Probably a good idea to leave a note on the Moon explaining what we tried, unless we're have some plan to use that as planetary sunscreen
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End of conversation
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I mean, what options are there?
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(And... if anything it seems conditions are backsliding, with social media etc deepening the dynamics that make things hard accomplish. Like a lot of this is because of bad faith actors and only more and more of those. Ugh.)
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I think if you were to talk with scientists whose work borders on climate you'd find the feeling is pretty widespread.
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There's no correct policy response other than "reduce carbon emissions." I think you're right that the abysmal worldwide failure on responding to COVID is a dress rehearsal for climate change, but it's unclear what that changes, or how you think people should respond
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It didn't colour anyone's beliefs because every rational person knows no western nation state is actually going to do anything about climate change.
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