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> | Free Software, Climate Change, and the Importance of Creeds-End Fit
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> | The Challenge of Coordination |
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< | "The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change" - James Hansen
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/obamas-second-chance-on-c_b_525567.html |
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> | Thurman Arnold writes that creeds shape the functioning of organizations. An important challenge with respect to
climate change is organizing people to press for needful changes to climate policies in a broad range of countries. In seeking to develop such a coordinated movement, attention to the organizational implications of the creeds used to market the movement is essential. Put another way, there needs to be an assessment of creeds-end fit, and creeds which do not help develop an organizational psychology capable of supporting the work that needs to be done should be de-emphasized. |
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> | To deal effectively with climate change, there must be a measure of policy coordination across countries. If the United States adopts a climate law which imposes carbon emissions limits, and production simply migrates to countries with less stringer limits, global emissions will remain unchanged. This is referred to as the problem of leakage. What this means is that even if activists are successful in pushing for a strong climate law in their own country, they will fail to solve the global problem of climate change. For this reason, among others, Richard Lazarus has referred to climate change as a "super wicked problem." |
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< | normative - should - |
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> | Arnold's Theory of Organizational Psychology |
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< | what needs to happen for that to happen, though? |
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> | The Experience of the Free Software Movement |
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< | consilient analysis: morality and motivation: psych, social psych, biology |
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> | In this respect, climate change activists can learn a great deal from the free software movement, which has been particularly thoughtful about the content of its creed and the seemingly subtle but important implications of words. |
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< | leff: the spanish prisoner: altercasting; attractiveness of an altruistic role. |
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> | Richard Stallman recognized the disconnect. There was a lack of creeds-end fit. A creed of open source may help convince corporations to help produce some powerful free software, but in the long term it provides no creedal counter to the sale and use of software which restricts user freedoms. |
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< | moral vision: john brown, quaker anti-slavery movement |
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> | Climate Change: Ethics or Incentives? |
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< | compare:
free software v. open source |
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> | Similarly, for the climate movement to rely on the language of incentives may seem appealing. Energy companies have begun to rebrand themselves. However, this creed of incentive doesn't provide the means to support the types of sacrifices needed to deal effectively with global climate change, which will fall with greatest fury on the poor. |
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< | justice frame matters:
have to be able to answer arguments about WHY to keep on struggling, when start to be pushback; claims that climate change hits poor mostly, so why should we care.
don'tr push the metaphor too tightly: acking the metaphor away from its metaphrand just a little more, so that the correspondences don't become so overtightened that the frame cracks.
arnold: different creeds: different organizational psychology implications
'm going to use the phrase "Free Software" to describe this material and I'm going to suggest to you that the choice of words is relevant. We are talking not merely about a form of production or a system of industrial relations, but also about the beginning of a social movement with specific political goals which will characterize not only the production of software in the twenty-first century, but the production and distribution of culture generally. My purpose this morning is to put that process in large enough context so that the significance of free software can be seen beyond the changes in the software industry alone.
This is a fascinating conversation, I've been thinking about it for fifteen years, I have a lot of fun doing it. I just want you to understand that such talk is the beginning of something way more important, and that in order to understand why it is important you have to understand why it is at all. It won't do to say it's Open Source--you'll get a good idea about the software business but you won't understand any of the rest of this because it won't be clear why what is happening is happening, or why the newspaper headlines read the way they do. What we are going through is a fundamental alteration in the areas of intellectual infrastructure and production all over the world. We're now talking about just one little piece. You have got to understand that the struggle is bigger than that. That it is more serious. That it commits us to fundamental moral questions that we have to take a side about. That the work we do as lawyers, and programmers and engineers now is about the future of freedom of ideas all over everywhere. That it means confrontations just as improbable in scale as the confrontation between the Microsoft Corporation and the Free Software Foundation, which I didn't name but which Mr. Mundie did. David and Goliath? Hell no. Goliath was just a big human being, basically the same as David but larger.
econodwarf - people only work for incentives > environmental economics/cost-benefit > veblen: workshmanship; autonomy.
distaste for futility: end with - why important to emphasize, this time, we win.
open source: incentive emphasized
free software: justice emphasized
McGowan? paper: holmes, gandhi
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christianity and climate change article; other climate and ethics articles: framing as moral issue
john brown: moral vision; justice - thoreau commentary.
not fundamentally a technical issue, essentially; moral issue.
moral priorities and commitments - guide technical work, are embedded in technical work: free software concept. |
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> | Al Gore, in attempting to shift to an ethical frame, rather than an incentive frame, invokes the analogy of World War II. However - nationalist frame. Reliance on carbon based fuels has been compared to slavery. Quakers. Student essay. |