Essay by Eric Worrall
Making do with less: “… We can repair and recreate our relationships with the Earth and the consumption that has gotten us to this point. …”
The world is not moving fast enough on climate change — social sciences can help explain why
Published: March 11, 2024 12.10am AEDT
Fayola Helen Jacobs Assistant Professor of urban planning, University of Minnesota
Candis Callison Associate professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia
Elizabeth Marino Associate Professor of Anthropology, Oregon State University…
The first is that climate change has the potential to exacerbate health, social and economic outcomes for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and low-income communities. The second is that social systems and institutions — including governmental, cultural, spiritual and economic structures — are the only places where adaptation and mitigation can occur.
…
There are a range of outcomes that may stem from climate related disasters with a vast inventory of what is possible. There are also hopeful examples that point the way to rich collaborations and problem solving. For example, Tulsa, Okla. was the most frequently flooded city in the U.S. from the 1960s into the 1980s, but a coalition of concerned citizens came together with the city government to create a floodplain management plan that serves as a model for other cities.
…
There is an adage that says in order to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. Make no mistake, climate change is the most urgent issue of our time. However, moving quickly and carelessly will serve only to re-entrench existing social, economic, political and environmental inequalities.
Instead, we must look at other ways of being in the world. We can repair and recreate our relationships with the Earth and the consumption that has gotten us to this point. We can pay attention and listen to global Indigenous peoples and others who have cared for this earth for millennia.
We must be more creative with our solutions and committed to ensuring that all, and not just a privileged few, are able to live in a better world than the one in which they were born into. Technological approaches alone will not achieve this goal. To build a better world we need the social sciences.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/the-world-is-not-moving-fast-enough-on-climate-change-social-sciences-can-help-explain-why-218091
If more government solved people’s problems, the Soviet Union would have been a beacon of prosperity.
I think social workers have their place – someone to turn to, if someone’s life turns into a train wreck, and they have no other place to go, though arguably private charities and churches adequately fill this role.
But social workers trying to convince everyone to live with less, trying to address “the consumption that has gotten us to this point“? Instead of telling everyone to love poverty, why not focus on creating conditions where everyone can be rich enough to fix their own problems?
Because there is a well trodden path to achieving near universal wealth – get the government out of the way. The Asian Miracle transformed a bunch of impoverished fishing villages into some of the wealthiest places on Earth in just 5 decades. All that was needed was lower taxes and business friendly government – and an almost complete lack of social workers.
Sir John Cowperthwaite, the Legendary post WW2 Hong Kong finance secretary who is widely credited with kick starting the Asian Miracle, spent most of his career battling social workers and other well intentioned government busybodies, point blank refusing to provide the British Government with detailed Hong Kong economic data, to block their meddling.
Cowperthwaite was once asked what poor countries should do to replicate the success of Asian tigers like Hong Kong, which thrived under his administration. Cowperthwaite’s response was “They should abolish the office of national statistics.”.
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An Inconvenient Truth.
Social workers could deal with the Mass Sociogenic Illness of Climate Change Apocalypticism. Attempting to deal with a nonexistent problem starts with realizing there is no real problem, just a mass delusion. A more effective witch hunt does not make witches real.
Social Science is in the best position to solve the Climate Crisis, having created it.
CC is not a crisis, it’s a meme.
A crisis has bodies by the road, a meme has media coverage without journalistic analysis.
Clima-Change™
Social Science is the only intervention that will enable an anti-human solution to climate change while lining pockets with taxpayer money with bad tech non-solutions. For the deep pocket radical environmentalists, the problem is us and the only solution is depopulation. Deep learning social science is the only way to achieve this.
So far the psychology and sociology of climate change propaganda has been very effective in creating a psychological and economic crisis and empowering the left to do further damage.
The relationship between birth rates and dystopic propaganda is up for grabs. The demographers point to wealth, smart psychologists and social workers ask the question climate change dystopic propaganda quietly to themselves.
Some social workers are well educated and understand statistics and are Christian paleoconservatives. Some social workers understand eugenics and it’s philosophical underpinnings which have led to the current anti-human movement.
I am a case in point.
What we need is legal action against the covert funding and fraud of propaganda. Social workers who are the bulk of licensed mental health clinicians in a pandemic devastated mental health system are dealing with the mental health epidemic that the fraud of propaganda has created in our children ages 14-30. 59% of these young people say they are not planning to marry or have children. Time for social science to better understand the relationship between the current propaganda regime, mental health and the individual’s projection of future outcomes such as marriage and family.
Correction: “The first is that climate change activism has the potential to exacerbate health, social and economic outcomes for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and low-income communities.”. Actually, it isn’t “has the potential to”, it’s “does”.
It’s funny (=sad?) that people who spend all their time living in inner-city comfortable homes and work in comfortable city offices, claim to have all the answers to a “problem” they have never personally experienced nor observed.
Is this that same genre of “educated” people who insist on loudly proclaiming how “offended” they are on behalf of other people, of whom they have never met one, about some or other issue that the “offended people” themselves have no knowledge or experience of.
Are there post-graduate courses available in Rationality?
You wouldn’t need to get cancer to cure it.
(Either I can or can’t help learn the solution)
We probably agree on cc but the argumt that one must be affected to truly understand does not hold up.
Yet some of the most motivated people I know in the field of cancer research, bringing emergency services, building medical systems, agricultural advancements, etc. were people either directly touched, or close to those who would receive the benefits of prior research and investment.
(just extra data points to consider)
How irrational!
I keep hoping for the education industry to introduce course work in critical thinking.
“Thinking must be the hardest work there it, as so few engage in it.”
— Henry Ford
Every survey I have seen of actual Native Americans, finds that very, very few of them are concerned regarding sports teams adopting Native American themes.
For that reason, almost none of them mind being called Indians.
A jury can reason incredibly well and come up with the wrong verdict due to false testimony
People can be highly rational working from false presuppositions. No one is free from false presuppositions. We all are dependent on trusting the testimony of others that something is true. None of us have perfect complete knowledge of everything that is our reality. This is what faith is in it’s most stripped down sense. This is the reason we have science to prove what is real or true, and/or degrees of truth of how factors relate to each other. The desire for what is real is built into us. We must have a working understanding of how things relate to one another even at the most rudimentary level. If it wasn’t so, we would have died out a long time ago.
This desire to understand is deformed by the social science of propaganda which is the technique of establishing false presuppositions rooted in false testimony creating false realities. The end motive behind this sort of systemic/endemic false testimony technique is always money and power. News papers were one thing, then radio, then TV now we are all glue to our scrolling devices…the technique has far more powerful tools than ever before.
The problem is that much of the reasoning in science is itself weaponized false testimony to push along the propaganda imperative….. either by believing the false presuppositions, that is being a victim of that propaganda, or worse being a paid perpetrator of the larger program of false witness.
False Testimony is a breach of trust, Climate change social science/deep learning empowered propaganda is a breach of trust at an enormous scale.
All true.
“climate change has the potential to exacerbate health, social and economic outcomes for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and low-income communities. “
What do they even mean by that gibberish ???
“We must be more creative with our solutions”..
Solutions to what??… a total non-problem ???
Firstly… apart from a slight and highly beneficial warming out of the LIA…. What has changed with the “climate”?
Secondly… The use of fossil fuels has been responsible for some of the most positive human progress in many centuries.
Thirdly… Enhanced atmospheric CO2 has given the world the ability to feed the increasing population, and provide massive benefits even to BIPOC and low-income communities.
WHY STUFF IT UP NOW with idiotic anti-human, anti-life, anti-CO2 agendas !
Take your rancid social interference elsewhere… WE DON’T WANT IT.
“What do they even mean by that gibberish ???”
Their real socialist/communist aim is to pit minority groups against White people. The radical Left presents itself as being the champions of the oppressed, so they always divide us up into groups.
It’s all radical leftwing political propaganda.
They could just as easily have said “low-income communities” and left out the :”BIPOC” stuff but they like naming the “victims” they purport to represent.
they like naming the “victims” they purport to represent.
Necessary to maintain division.
Correct me if I am wrong.
The 3 authors** propose using social science to solve a problem, being (a) unaware that there is no problem, and (b) being unaware that a very successful “architect of the Asian Miracle” totally disagrees with their solution.
**None seem to have knowledge of the natural world – physics, chemistry, biology, earth science.
“None seem to have knowledge of the natural world”
Unfortunately, that includes many in those sciences you listed.
Quite right. There is no science in social science. Same goes for political science. They just want to drag everyone down to the lowest level. They never suggest anything to improve the lives of those on the bottom rung of the ladder.
Who was it said that anything that has to have “science” in its title isn’t one ?
I use “Earth science” to mean geology, hydrology, meteorology, soils, physical geography ….
The current buzz term is STEM — Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
The current buzz term is STEM — Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
Catch up, the current term is STEAM. You left out Arts.
Climate science.
Try to find a degree program.
Here’s one, and there are many more…an easy route to a Masters, even Ph.D. degree for those bad at math.
https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/programs/climate-environmental-change.
When I went to Uni, enrolment in the Environment Department mostly consisted of those who knew they were about to fail the mid-term exams in the Engineering Department.
Physical sciences, meaning physics, chemistry, metallurgy, architecture, etc.
Whenever you put the word “social” in front of a word or phrase, you can replace “social” with “not” and be more accurate.
social science = not science
social justice = not justice
etc.
“but a coalition of concerned citizens came together with the city government to create”. So it was citizen driven not government driven.
“The first is that climate change has the potential to exacerbate health, social and economic outcomes for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and low-income communities. The second is that social systems and institutions — including governmental, cultural, spiritual and economic structures — are the only places where adaptation and mitigation can occur.”
well gosh don’t forget that bad climates are also anti-semetic too. 6 million were killed just last year alone. Sheesh. Wow, guess I’m lucky I’m not in the free state of south dakota.
The caption to the photo heading of The Conversation piece:
“People walk on the snowless streets of Place Jacques Cartier in Old Montréal on Jan. 3, 2024. February 2024 was the warmest February in human history”.
Wow, February in Montreal was the warmest in at least 300,000 years; the ladies then lapse into the usual scolding kindergarten teacher mode:
“And there is no doubt that we are indeed facing a new world … we must look at other ways of being in the world [?] …” and so on.
Their little homily is replete with ‘we’s (15) and I’m pretty sure they are not referring to their good selves.
The leaders and decision makers of modern western democracies are definitely a new breed. Their method of solving major social, economic or environmental problems would not have been recognized as rational planning by the old evidence-based, stick-in-the-mud, critical thinking scientists of decades past. Have you got a major problem with illegal drug use? Just change the law so it is legal and have health care distribute the drugs for free. Are too many people dying of drug overdoses? Just call it “dignity in dying” and charge for the service. Is property crime massively out of control? Just stop calling it crime and treat is a cry for help from those oppressed by other people’s insistence in building a successful life by hard work, strong ethics, integrity and respect for family and the law. Take taxpayers wealth and give it to the
criminals“oppressed” so they don’t need to steal as much.Are people concerned about unfettered illegal immigration across the borders and all the drug trafficking, human trafficking and criminal activity it brings? Just fly them in and give them official status under a whimsical executive order thought up over a double dip cone on the beach. Sane people not bowing down to the mythical climate crisis and obeying all the personal restrictions being proposed for the unproven and unwitnessed weather chaos that’s predicted? Just treat them all as mentally ill or agents of Satan and send in the propagandists, social workers, antiterrorist militias and liberal talk show hosts to reprogram them all.
Worst of all, when people stubbornly refuse to vote for the right sort of politician, leaders choose to defend democracy by selectively applying it only to those with the correct flags on their lawns while setting the security and judicial branches of government loose like mad dogs on those who choose any politician or party that doesn’t support, massive government, massive regulation, national subservience to unelected global demagogues, and a whittling of personal rights and freedoms down to an unrecognizable putrid residue of nothingness.
It’s clear that Biden was yelling at you during the SOTU.
Was he? I wasn’t paying attention. Rather, as a curious physician I was looking about the house for the nearest automatic defibrillator in case they needed to wake him up to get him off the stage.
Interesting how the party that claims that only they want to bring the country together, spend almost all of their time and energy, demonizing anyone who disagrees with them.
We know this is happening in the West but it sounds just like certain communist states in the 1960s and 70s!
There’s a lot to pick apart in this pile of steaming garbage, but what always gets me is this fanciful trope about indigenous peoples always being good stewards of nature. By indigenous, I am guessing they mean people who have inhabited certain areas for centuries, or more, in some cases going back into prehistory. Regardless, it’s abundantly clear these fools have no knowledge of history – not just climatic and geological, but human history. If they did, they’d realize that humans have been terraforming the land (and water) to their liking for ages. Going way back in historical times and further back into the stone age.
People have cleared forests (mostly by burning), have built dams along waterways, have imported various animal and plant species, have wiped out various native species, have dredged canals and in general have made all sorts of modifications to suit their needs. Some of these changes had little impact on the environment, while others had some very negative impacts.
Aborigines in Australia brought dogs with them (now naturalized as dingoes) thousands of years ago. This caused some very negative consequences for the native wildlife. But yet they are “indigenous peoples” and therefore (in the minds of the ignorant) have done nothing to harm an ecosystem. Just because (hundreds or thousands of years ago) people lacked modern technology didn’t mean they were incapable of making environmental changes. If ancient peoples could build huge pyramids, henges and other lasting monuments, then they could terraform their environment to suit them. This whole “living in harmony with nature” crap is just that – some ancient peoples did so, while others did not. Just like today.
Easter Island with its indigenous population developed practices and beliefs that should stand as an example to all, how ignorant uneducated native populations turn paradise into a desert devoid of natural life while littered with stone carvings of useless human effort.
True. The island was covered with palm trees that are now extinct due to an obsessive need to carve and transport large stone statues using the wood provided by the palms.
If that isn’t a parable of the effects of belief in CAGW, then I don’t know what is…
I have seen accounts the problem was the accidental introduction of rats.
Ah the ‘Noble Savage’ How I miss them!
Life was harsh for indigenous peoples. Most of them became one with “Mother Earth and the Great Spirit” before age 40.
You don’t have to read any further than here to know this crackpot doesn’t know what they are talking about.
“Make no mistake, climate change is the most urgent issue of our time.”
There may or may not be a need for social workers I don’t know. But I fail to see how someone this mindless could be much benefit to anyone.
Second crack at this Apple.
“we need the social sciences”
Actual Science is ‘hard’. Math, physics, chemistry, biology, geology… Rigorous.
Anything else claiming to be a ‘science’ isn’t—just a Misappropriated label. We have polysi, socsci, ecsci, psysci, and now even gendersci. And of course clisci.
“clisci” is the most insidious and useless of all.
I believe it was Lord Kelvin that said “Physics is the only Science. All the rest are just stamp collecting.”
I’m not aware of any problem that “social science” has solved.
All it tends to do is create them.
“Social Science” has solved one problem. Employment of kids foolish enough to get degrees in “Social Science.”
For how much longer?
Ah! Come the revolution…
This reminds me of a saying a college roommate of mine used to say: As useless as tits on a boar hog.
“…global indigenous peoples…”
LOL
We are all indigenous to the globe we live on, no?
The first is that climate change has the potential to exacerbate health, social and economic outcomes for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and low-income communities.
Sure will you middle class twits as we’re OK with a well insulated metro home with solar panels on the roof to run efficient inverter RC aircon and I’ve just put a deposit down for a new Toyota hybrid runabout for the missus (10 month wait apparently). All electric home with storage HWS so we’re sweet with the power and fuel bills but what about struggletown with their power bills and an old banger car if they’re lucky? They can’t even dream of a compulsory new EV at the prices but no matter you outback blackfellas we’ve all got to make sacrifices for the doomsters. How do these stinkers in residence sleep at night?
As this goes on, the obvious outcome is that only billionaires are going to be exempt from the consequences. But that is ok since they are raking in cash hand over fist pushing this.
I liked the emotional rhetoric of humanizing the Earth so its like a partner in marriage or something akin to a covenant of sorts where there are implied duties and honors. No manipulation going on there!
But also a common feature in Leftist language is the deliberate ambiguity that requires the audience to eisegete meaning: “that has gotten us to this point”. Where there is very broad interpretation of what is mean by that phrase. My first instinct was, “well yeah, the point of not freezing to death in the winter, having indoor plumbing, a reliable source of energy, food, sanitation, luxury, security, future…”
The Earth is trying to kill us ever since expulsion from The Garden, it has been a constant contest of survival against the effects of The Fall on a Cursed Earth. The Earth was uniquely intended and designed to support human life, and we have been given abundant resources to take advantage of, provided that there is some investment of sweat equity.
For millennia our ancestors strove to make a better life for us so that we can live full lives rather than dying of heatstroke in the middle of a field hoping that a drought or plague of locusts doesn’t negate the effort. If the accumulative efforts that brought us a global supply chain are “the consumption that has gotten us to this point” then Hallelujah!
When the Good LORD said “Take Dominion … over all the Earth”, I’ll accept that marching order long before some Dark Tetrad sadistic psychopath tries to manipulate society back two thousand years by sounding like a whiny daughter whose daddy has cut off her credit card and given her a time-out on social media.
If we reset back 2 millennia, will we have to reinstitute slavery?
And reduce women to chattel again?
Seems like there have been significant social gains since we moved out of the caves.
If you want slavery, you don’t have to go back even two days, there is more slavery going on today than three hundred years or even two thousand years ago.
If you like seeing women as chattel, look no further than the US southern border where many women and girls are enslaved into human trafficking and sex trafficking industry.
Seems like there has been significant social setbacks since we have allowed the Left to dominate in policy.
“Assistant Professor of urban planning”
Maybe they need to come up with some ‘plans’ to address real urban problems, such as crime, potholes, poverty, jobs, etc.
Their solution to crime seems to run the gamut of eliminating police departments, instant bail for everyone, decriminalizing most crimes, etc.
In other words, their goal is to make life easier for criminals.
Poverty, they are working as hard as they can to make everyone except themselves, poor.
I’m always amused when Progressives complain about people having too much stuff (money) and then suggesting that the answer is taking other people’s stuff so that they can better manage it.
In a speech, Pres. Clinton once said that he would love to give the people a tax cut, but he was afraid that the people would mis-spend that money and thus hurt the economy.
Apparently, only government is capable of spending your money correctly.
Britain was an economic basket case for over a decade after WWII. (I’d argue that they really didn’t fully recover until Thatcher) How much quicker would they have recovered had they followed Cowperthwaite’s advice at home?
“…that has gotten us TO THIS POINT.”
Yes, we need to put a stop to all this prosperity, recreation, longevity, and abundance. Right now./sarc
If we were to do that, what would social workers do for a living? How will they manage to convince themselves that they matter?
“Social Science can Solve the Climate Crisis”
If that’s true, then it seems obvious that “Climate Science” has never been more than “Political Science”. All to promote “The Cause”.
If you replace the term ‘climate change’ with ‘extreme weather events’, then this article makes sense.
Whenever there is a major weather event, such as a flood, storm, drought, heat wave, forest fire, and so on, the historical records usually show that such events have occurred frequently in the past, in the same area.
Whilst the media often describe such major events as unprecented, the reality is they are usually just a repetition of natural events which have occurred in the past, so the major problem that many people face, in certain areas which are prone to certain types of extreme weather events, is learning from history and preparing for the re-occurrence of such events.
The social sciences can help people in this respect. Here is a relevant link from the article. If the use of the word ‘climate’ upsets you, then replace it with’weather’. However, if a particular area is subject to periodic heavy rain, or droughts, or hurricanes, then that is part of the ‘climate’ of that area.
The following quote begins at page 232 in the linked pdf in the article, relating to the situation in Tusla, Oklahoma.
https://kresge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/climate-adaptation-the-state-of-practice-in-us-communities-full-report.pdf
“There are a range of outcomes that may stem from climate (weather) related disasters with a vast inventory of what is possible. There are also hopeful examples that point the way to rich collaborations and problem solving. For example, Tulsa, Okla. was the most frequently flooded city in the U.S. from the 1960s into the 1980s, but a coalition of concerned citizens came together with the city government to create a floodplain management plan that serves as a model for other cities.
Historically, the City of Tulsa experienced frequent and often devastating flooding events. Major flooding disasters produced some management changes. For example, after the 1923 flood, Tulsa preserved 2,800 acres of open-space in the Bird Creek floodplain; after the 1943 flood, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) developed the Arkansas River levee system to protect Tulsa’s oil refineries; and after the 1957 and 1959 floods, the Corps built the Keystone Dam upstream of Tulsa on the Arkansas River (Patton, 2009). Flooding events in the 1970s and 1980s motivated community members to begin to think holistically about flood management instead of implementing intermittent actions.
A community group, described in greater detail below, advocated for a comprehensive flood management system that included extensive flood maps, acquisition and removal of repetitively flooded property, ending new development in flood-prone areas, installing remedial works that hold and convey stormwater, and establishing a stormwater utility fee on water bills to create a funding stream for the maintenance and management of the flood control regulations. This case study focuses on the City of Tulsa’s acquisition and relocation program for repeatedly flooded properties. However, the success of the acquisition and relocation program is contingent on the full suite of flood control regulations. As such, this case study touches on several aspects of Tulsa’s comprehensive floodplain management system. In addition, we provide additional information about the history of flooding in Tulsa and the critical role of the community in implementing the suite of flood control regulations.
According to Ron Flanagan and Ann Patton, Tulsans for a Better Community faced significant opposition from pro-development interests, particularly the Home Builders Association, who viewed flood-control measures as anti-development (Patton, 2009, 2014; Flanagan, 2014).
In 1978, pro-development interests were successful in electing a pro-development commission, including Senator Inhofe as mayor of the City of Tulsa (Flanagan, 2014). This commission relaxed regulations in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Patton, 2009).
However, a change in political power in 1984 which brought in newly elected officials sympathetic to flood victims, and the occurrence of the 1984 Memorial Day Flood, which was Tulsa’s worst flooding event to date, suppressed the opposition (Patton, 2014).
Where are the social sciences in that lot?
There seems to be quite a bit of hydrology and engineering, a bit of accounting, and a fair whack of politics.
The hydrology and engineering would not have taken place without the social agreement of the people of Tulsa. The Social Sciences can assist in community agreement, by encouraging discussions about the causes of the problems.
Those who were against the flood mitigation proposals of the ‘Tulsans for a Better Community’ group, had financial interest in the building industry, such as the Home Builders Association, presumably because they didn’t want any ban on the approval of housing construction on flood prone areas.
In 1978, those pro-development interests were successful in electing a pro-development commission, including Senator Inhofe as mayor of the City of Tulsa.
However, a change in political power in 1984 brought in newly elected officials who were sympathetic to flood victims.
You’re going to have to spoon feed me here. Exactly which social sciences were involved, and which aspects of those social sciences were used?
The hydrology, surveying, civil engineering (yes, I know the jokes) and economics/accounting contributions are clear, but not the others.
I will grant that economics tends towards the Social Sciences side.
“Social” in as much as economics is the study of human behaviour in relation to money…
Economics is actually the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Money is just a way of keeping track.
In any case, does that mean that economics/accounting was the only social science involved?