11–20 of 73 posts
> Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Interesting. I do recall that in 2012, North Carolina's House Bill 819 prohibited the state's Coastal Resources Commission from calculating sea-level changes using recent data.
It was a sad day to be a North Carolinian...
As I wrote in HN's dialog about a New York Magazine article on global warming 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…
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 out…
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.
> Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Interesting. I do recall that in 2012, North Carolina's House Bill 819 prohibited the state's Coastal Resources Commission from calculating sea-level changes using recent data.
As I wrote in HN's dialog about a New York Magazine article on global warming 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…
I too would like to see examples from your site. Does your book on mental models relate to this topic beyond surface relationships?
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 and http://joshuaspodek.com/living-with-integrity-means-consider... and links within.
Will the US see large engineering works this century to prevent flooding? Large stretches of Florida have quite alot of property right on the sea barely above sea level, would these property owners demand protection?
There's probably not much chance of saving florida.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too would like to see examples from your site. Does your book on mental models relate to this topic beyond surface relationships?
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 out…
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,…
Will the US see large engineering works this century to prevent flooding? Large stretches of Florida have quite alot of property right on the sea barely above sea level, would these property owners demand protection?
So far, I've heard they have 100 years to sort it out. The "engineers" will find a "solution". They'll build dikes like the dutch (never mind the dutch took 300 years). My favourite is "we'll build houses on stilts".
As I wrote in HN's dialog about a New York Magazine article on global warming 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…
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?