If you look at the works psychologists have done about individual reports of wellbeing, what happens is that if you're poor, you are not happy. But once you achieve a certain level of material satisfaction then income has very little correlation with people's reported states of happiness, things like climate matter more, things like the culture of the country in which you're raised matter more and so the things really, let's face it, like individual temperament matter more than these things.

When I first started studying climate change back in the 1980s, I was struck by how difficult it was be for people to understand this issue.

On my reading of history people who want to bring us the best are usually the people we ought to be afraid of.

We can use economic instruments to help realize our goals but economics does not tell us what our goals should be.

In much of the world today there are no more chilling words than "I'm from the United States and I'm here to help you."

Critics of Consequentialism have often assumed that hedonism (or preference-satisfaction) must be the theory of the good, that the deontic principle must be maximizing, and that the principle should be applied to individual acts. Indeed, this version is often called "classical utilitarianism" and attributed to Bentham and sometimes even to Mill. Rather than a "classical" view it is a recent construction foisted on to the tradition.

If we don't have historical consciousness we can't really understand problems in all their dimensions, and if we can't understand problems than we can't find solutions.