Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Future Problem Solving

I agree with Yglesias:

I really worry sometimes about things like The New York Times Magazine giving advice on how to reduce your carbon footprint. Not only are these kind of "personal virtue" efforts insufficient to tackling the challenge of global warming, I think talking about them too much is actually counterproductive.

2 comments:

Guy said...

tom,

i think Matt Y stretches too much for his low-hanging fruit. his reaction is understandable in the wake of the Earth Day feel good "buy canvas bags" rhetoric, but he in my mind misses the main point. such "personal virtues" are likely insufficient ON THEIR OWN to fix the problem, but i think it's a hard argument to make that they are not indeed necessary as part of the fix.

Bill Kerr said...

Where does "personal virtue" begin and end wrt "saving the planet"? Just recently one of the initiators of Greenpeace said he left because they abandoned a scientific approach. WSJ article