Climate Wickedness Informs Climate Solutions

Many of us are concerned or even alarmed over climate change. On the surface, mitigating climate change doesn’t seem like it should be that complicated. All we have to do is transition off of fossil fuels, and we could do that with the technology we have right now. But once we start trying to actually do it, it becomes apparent that not everyone is motivated to support these changes. To some, the solutions seem to be worse than the problem. This is what makes climate change a “wicked problem”.

Climate scientist Michael Mann doesn’t like to apply the term wicked problem to climate change because it can be interpreted that the problem is unsolvable and create a sense of hopelessness that would inhibit action. Other words like denial, which is the natural human state but is often interpreted as an insult, or uncertain, which is often interpreted as being synonymous with unsure, run into the same problem. It’s like the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984 is decimating the language we have at our disposal to accurately convey the situation, and there’s a tradeoff to be made when attempting to oversimplify this problem.

The rational response to climate change without considering its inherent wickedness would be to acknowledge the problem from a scientific perspective, identify the effective solutions that will prevent warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, and dismiss misinformation. But we need to beware of what Jonathan Haidt refers to in his book The Righteous Mind as the rationalist delusion. People are intuitionists, not rationalists. Worshipping reason will serve to help us win arguments, but it may blind us to larger truths, like how to deal with solution aversion.

As Katharine Hayhoe describes in Saving Us, we all have our own reasons for caring about climate change. Ask 100 people why they care about climate change and you’ll probably get 100 different answers. As a result, those 100 people may not be amenable to the same solutions. For example, the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act passed the Senate 92 to 8, but vegan Senator Cory Booker, a supporter of other climate measures, was one of the 8 that voted against it, and I speculate that this could be in part because the bill may increase livestock production. Bernie Sanders and many environmentalists are adamantly against solutions to climate change that involve nuclear power. Republicans unanimously oppose the Green New Deal because of their ideological opposition to expanding government regulations. Libertarians generally oppose revenue-positive carbon taxes and many have taken the Americans for Prosperity pledge against this measure. Lastly, many progressives are uncomfortable with market-based solutions because of their disdain for anything associated with neoliberalism. Our intuitionist nature combined with our values often prevent us from making rational choices.

As Haidt points out, the solution is not to try and change people, it’s to change the system that people operate within. A revenue-neutral carbon tax would be one way of doing that since it would create an incentive structure for going green. It doesn’t expand government. It is a tax, but it’s a special tax that gets returned 100% back to the tax payers. And who doesn’t like getting a tax return? Ted Halstead even has an appropriately titled TED talk on the subject: A Climate Solution where All Sides Can Win.

The opposition seems to come primarily from three groups. The first are people with a financial conflict of interest, and these are the people whose tactics Mann writes about in The New Climate War. The second is a subset of Republicans that incorporate opposition to climate action as part of their identity. Ezra Klein provides a great explanation of identity protective cognition in his book Why We’re Polarized for why heavily invested climate change dismissives like Sean Hannity are unable to change their minds. The third is from some progressives since a carbon tax is a market-based mechanism. A carbon tax would greatly benefit the poor and vulnerable that progressives are fighting to protect which seems to demonstrate the power of intuition.

While a carbon tax has the potential to be an effective policy instrument embraced by most, it won’t do anything if it’s not passed into law. And for that to happen, people need to be more than just supportive of the policy, they typically need to feel that climate change is currently affecting them personally. This is the difference between being concerned(25% of Americans) and alarmed (33% of Americans). Without feeling alarmed, climate action just isn’t that high on people’s priority lists.

Progressive social justice activists are typically alarmed about climate change since it’s already harming the poor and the vulnerable. In The New Climate War, Michael Mann describes the reaction he got to a critique of Naomi Klein’s vision of the Green New Deal. He found common ground with Klein on the seriousness to address climate change, but was critical of her stance on the ability of market mechanisms to be effective in mitigating the problem. This lead to a backlash from her followers on Twitter. Mann does a great job laying out the arguments for why social justice activists should embrace carbon pricing by generalizing regulations to other forms of market mechanisms and demonstrating how a carbon tax would immediately benefit the poor and vulnerable. In this case it’s worth the effort to influence others to modify their views.

Perhaps the polar opposite of Naomi Klein is Bjorn Lomborg. While Lomborg acknowledges that anthropogenic climate change exists, he doesn’t seem to take it seriously at all. But as an economist, he is supportive of a carbon tax. He even writes about it in his book False Alarm. I think it would be strategic to find common ground with both Klein and Lomborg. Lomborg is an influential figure. He has the ear of other influential figures like Jordan Peterson, for example. If Lomborg were to be more vocal about the benefits of a carbon tax, it could open up a space for more Republicans and Libertarians to talk about it and help move the needle on this issue.

Other prominent authors have also come to the conclusion that we should meet people where they’re at. Katharine Hayhoe tells the story of how she bonded with a climate change dismissive over knitting and found common ground with him by commending him on his sustainable lifestyle. George Marshall, author of Don’t Even Think about It, thinks that we need new messages from nonenvironmentalists such as emphasizing that the toxins from burning fossil fuels poisons the unborn. And Shenkar Vedantam, author of Useful Delusions, as well as Marshall and Hayhoe, have come to the conclusions that religion can play a prominent role in helping people connect the dots between climate change and the values they already possess without changing any of their existing beliefs.

Climate change is very much a wicked problem. Looking at it this way helps us see more clearly what needs to be done to fix the problem. If you want to be part of the solution to help pass carbon pricing in the US, check out the following calling campaign from Citizens’ Climate Lobby, but don’t wait too long since this current opportunity with Congress won’t last indefinitely.