| | Climate Change and the Importance of Creeds-End Fit
The Challenge of Coordination | |
<
< | 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." | >
> | 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, if other countries do not cooperate, 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." | | | | |
<
< | Thurman Arnold writes that successful organizations have creeds that provide a sense of cohesion to members and coordinate their actions. 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 sustain the type of coordinated work described above should be de-emphasized. | >
> | Thurman Arnold writes that successful organizations have creeds that provide a sense of cohesion to members and coordinate their actions. 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 support the movement is essential. Put another way, there needs to be an assessment of creeds-end fit, and creeds which do not help sustain the type of internationally coordinated work described above should be de-emphasized. | | | Arnold's Theory of Organizational Psychology | | | It may seem a truism that good politics is not good policy. But one thing Arnold can teach us here is that since we are not all fully rational Thinking Persons, we are all prey to the allure of creeds. They are comforting because they simplify a complex and anxious modernity, and for that reason they are seductive. We do not always rationally select our political tactics to serve our policy goals. Creeds sometimes choose people, not the reverse. Once creeds gel into an organizational psychology, they become difficult to change, even in the face of persistent facts. | |
<
< | However, like Fosdick, we can seek to leverage what agency we can muster to develop creeds that invoke, to borrow a phrase, "the better angels of our nature." Emphasizing an ethical frame that expresses its goal as seeking justice, rather than optimizing incentives, may not be good near-term politics but at least provides a means of motivating action when individual incentives run out. According to contemporary economists, people do not act in ways that do not maximize their utility. | >
> | However, like Fosdick, we can seek to leverage what agency we can muster to develop creeds that invoke, to borrow a phrase, "the better angels of our nature." Emphasizing an ethical frame that expresses its goal as seeking justice, rather than optimizing incentives, may not be good near-term politics but at least provides a means of motivating action when individual incentives run out. | | | | |
<
< | But history offer examples of people who have dedicated themselves to working for justice. In American history, John Brown and Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind. These types of examples, of humans struggling for justice rather than for their own gain that can serve as the basis of a justice-based creed to organize a climate movement. An incentives-based creed will not be to deal with the long, complex, and demanding task of supporting a global approach to climate change. | >
> | According to contemporary economists, people do not act in ways that do not maximize their utility. But history offer examples of people who have dedicated themselves to working for justice. In American history, John Brown and Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind. These types of examples, of humans struggling for justice rather than for their own gain, can serve as the basis of a justice-based creed to organize a climate movement. An incentives-based creed will not be to deal with the long, complex, and demanding task of supporting a global approach to climate change. |
|