Comments on: Selling Global Warming http://www.magnetstrategy.com/2006/03/02/selling-global-warming/ Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:14:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.1 by: rosstolton http://www.magnetstrategy.com/2006/03/02/selling-global-warming/#comment-6 Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:36:44 +0000 http://www.magnetstrategy.com/2006/03/02/selling-global-warming/#comment-6 Hi Derek: Yes, I totally agree. Your point was Seth's second point. It's the frog in a pot of boiling water theory (which turned out <a href="http://www.uga.edu/srel/ecoview11-18-02.htm" rel="nofollow">not to be valid but anyway....</a>) that we can't imagine, or CARE about what happens decades from now because damnit, I wanna drive my SUV NOW!! But I also believe that the <i>language</i> doesn't even alert us that the problem is freaking serious and we ought to pay strict attention - and fast. Hi Derek: Yes, I totally agree. Your point was Seth’s second point. It’s the frog in a pot of boiling water theory (which turned out not to be valid but anyway….) that we can’t imagine, or CARE about what happens decades from now because damnit, I wanna drive my SUV NOW!!

But I also believe that the language doesn’t even alert us that the problem is freaking serious and we ought to pay strict attention - and fast.

]]> by: Derek K. Miller http://www.magnetstrategy.com/2006/03/02/selling-global-warming/#comment-5 Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:11:01 +0000 http://www.magnetstrategy.com/2006/03/02/selling-global-warming/#comment-5 I think the problem is more fundamental than that: we, as humans, aren't really evolutionarily designed to deal with problems that take place over such long time spans and with such disparate and multifaceted causes, even if we created them. Evidence indicates that we've been awfully good at causing population- and technology-driven environmental catastrophes on many different scales (from Easter Island to Rwanda) -- and, on occasion, also at creating relatively long-term sustainable systems as well. It's a huge marketing problem, because it requires getting people's thinking brains to override our innate predelictions for thinking in spans of a few years, instead of a few decades, in terms of our immediate interests instead of the more general commons. I'm not sure if "atmosphere cancer" would help that. I think the problem is more fundamental than that: we, as humans, aren’t really evolutionarily designed to deal with problems that take place over such long time spans and with such disparate and multifaceted causes, even if we created them. Evidence indicates that we’ve been awfully good at causing population- and technology-driven environmental catastrophes on many different scales (from Easter Island to Rwanda) — and, on occasion, also at creating relatively long-term sustainable systems as well.

It’s a huge marketing problem, because it requires getting people’s thinking brains to override our innate predelictions for thinking in spans of a few years, instead of a few decades, in terms of our immediate interests instead of the more general commons.

I’m not sure if “atmosphere cancer” would help that.

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