Overcoming Bias

Share this post

Green Is Far, Mostly Pink

www.overcomingbias.com

Discover more from Overcoming Bias

This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
Over 11,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Green Is Far, Mostly Pink

Robin Hanson
Sep 10, 2010
Share this post

Green Is Far, Mostly Pink

www.overcomingbias.com
21
Share

I’m teaching environmental econ again for the first time in six years, and reviewing some standard texts two things stand out:

  1. Green Is Mostly Pink – Weighted by public or private efforts, most environmental policies are focused on limiting the harm some “pink” humans do to others via intermediaries of air, water, food, light, or sound. Whether that harm passes through green stuff is incidental to such policies. Much of the rest focuses on vague concerns that current human ways are not “sustainable.” What little concern there is about green stuff out there is mostly to ensure humans have nice green places to visit when they want, and that humans avoid guilt for stuff that happens out there due to their intervention. Actually concern for the welfare of green stuff from its own point of view is pretty minimal.

  2. Green Is Far – At first, I found it hard to see what the various “environmental” topics have in common. Air purity, food locality, future human population, animal experiments, oil & mineral depletion, energy efficiency, sea levels, urban sprawl, landfills, consumerism, – what unites such diverse topics? And then it hit me: they are mostly rather “far“. That is, “environmental” concerns tend to be at unusually large distances in space, time, and social relation from ordinary folks and concerns. The common theme seems to be how we here now relate to much larger contexts, and the oddities of far-mode thinking go a long way to explain odd enviro thoughts.  Cosmology would be super-green, if folks thought we had a non-trivial relation to non-Earth life.

Share this post

Green Is Far, Mostly Pink

www.overcomingbias.com
21
Share
21 Comments
Share this discussion

Green Is Far, Mostly Pink

www.overcomingbias.com
Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

What did you think it meant?

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

Really, the only truly sustainable path for humanity is the constant advancement of science and technology, which requires constant economic growth over the long term. Straying from this path is suicide.

Frequently, environmental damage is caused by inefficiencies - resources winding up where you didn't intend them. Since inefficiency negatively impacts economic growth, eliminating it to the maximum extent possible serves both the interests of the economy and the environment.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
19 more comments...
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Robin Hanson
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing