None of us are rational economic men as we're supposed to be portrayed in economic theory where mixes of passions, of desires, of moral principles, of self-deception, of altruism, of concern of others, of concerns for ourselves and an interest in our bank accounts. And social policies have to be responsive to the complexity of who we are as people or else, like the war on drugs, they're simply going to fail.
Dale JamiesonWe're not good at noticing slow, steady changes in our environments, our senses are not very acute compared to those of many animals, and we're pretty awful at abstract thought, much less acting on it.
Dale JamiesonEvery country now has its own domestic political debate about how to respond to climate change. This is where the action is.
Dale JamiesonWe live in a world in which everyone wants solutions. But we can't find solutions if we don't understand the problems, and we can't understand the problems without knowing how we got here.
Dale JamiesonPeople who go around saying that it is wrong to fly and to eat meat are not so much making appeals to us from within our shared morality, but engaging in something more like "persuasive definition." They want us to look at the world and ourselves in a different way. Someday these prohibitions against flying and eating meat may be written into our moral psychology, but it will only be after there are viable, widely shared alternatives that are beginning to be widely adopted.
Dale Jamieson