This man's heart is clearly in the right place, so maybe this isn't fair. Nevertheless:
> The book is trying to get at this question of the gap between what people say they care about and what they do in response to a threat to all of it. If you ask the average American, “What do you love? What do you care about?” They'd say, “My family, my partner, my children, the natural world that I visit and recreate in– those things are important to me, my community.” And then you say “Climate change is a threat to all of those things. An existential threat. What are you doing about it?” And the reality on the ground from the last election is people barely even vote. And when they take action, those actions tend to be token recycling, and they don't take the next step of saying “what would really matter?” So the takeaway from the book is that the beauty of the world, our families, the stories we tell about ourselves, these are so precious that they're worth protecting. I'm hoping that that love and that caring will propel people to do really meaningful work on climate change.
You know, I think a different book needs to be written. The focus is always on the people who aren't doing much. I see it on HN all the time; hundreds of comments like "We aren't willing to make real sacrifices", "Everyone has a price", "No one truly cares", and so on.
On the contrary, I never see positive highlighting of the who is actually making sacrifices to do things that have an impact. Those get handwaved away in the above quotes, as if they don't exist.
They need to be put up on a pestedal, we need to highlight them and talk about how awesome they are. I've never seen any book do that. Tell people that you too can be one of them. Even when there's reporting on them, it's all very flat, matter of fact.
It's super harmful to wave them away, to not mention their existance, because in people's minds 1. it reinforces the idea that there's no choice 2. it makes people inadvertently feel good about themselves because oh well, we're all like that.
Spreading this exact sentiment is also such a well known strategy that bad actors have been using on a variety of topics for decades.
> I mean, if a company is publicly traded, it has to turn a profit for shareholders.
Real shame on CPR for implicitly supporting the myth of fiduciary duty, which too is incredibly harmful for the exact same reasons but for corporations - providing a cover as if there's no other option. As long as a company isn't intentionally, actively being run into the ground, there is absolutely zero risk of getting in trouble for not upholding fiduciary duty. It does not happen, it's a convenient myth to excuse companies offloading their negative externalities onto society in chase of shortterm greed. This is a real factor on this exact topic and it's really unfortunate this implication is being reinforced in such an article. Yes, they're not technically saying it, but it very much has that effect.
> The book is trying to get at this question of the gap between what people say they care about and what they do in response to a threat to all of it. If you ask the average American, “What do you love? What do you care about?” They'd say, “My family, my partner, my children, the natural world that I visit and recreate in– those things are important to me, my community.” And then you say “Climate change is a threat to all of those things. An existential threat. What are you doing about it?” And the reality on the ground from the last election is people barely even vote. And when they take action, those actions tend to be token recycling, and they don't take the next step of saying “what would really matter?” So the takeaway from the book is that the beauty of the world, our families, the stories we tell about ourselves, these are so precious that they're worth protecting. I'm hoping that that love and that caring will propel people to do really meaningful work on climate change.
You know, I think a different book needs to be written. The focus is always on the people who aren't doing much. I see it on HN all the time; hundreds of comments like "We aren't willing to make real sacrifices", "Everyone has a price", "No one truly cares", and so on.
On the contrary, I never see positive highlighting of the who is actually making sacrifices to do things that have an impact. Those get handwaved away in the above quotes, as if they don't exist.
They need to be put up on a pestedal, we need to highlight them and talk about how awesome they are. I've never seen any book do that. Tell people that you too can be one of them. Even when there's reporting on them, it's all very flat, matter of fact.
It's super harmful to wave them away, to not mention their existance, because in people's minds 1. it reinforces the idea that there's no choice 2. it makes people inadvertently feel good about themselves because oh well, we're all like that.
Spreading this exact sentiment is also such a well known strategy that bad actors have been using on a variety of topics for decades.
> I mean, if a company is publicly traded, it has to turn a profit for shareholders.
Real shame on CPR for implicitly supporting the myth of fiduciary duty, which too is incredibly harmful for the exact same reasons but for corporations - providing a cover as if there's no other option. As long as a company isn't intentionally, actively being run into the ground, there is absolutely zero risk of getting in trouble for not upholding fiduciary duty. It does not happen, it's a convenient myth to excuse companies offloading their negative externalities onto society in chase of shortterm greed. This is a real factor on this exact topic and it's really unfortunate this implication is being reinforced in such an article. Yes, they're not technically saying it, but it very much has that effect.