The University of Illinois has posted a well-produced video of my talk there last October, titled ?9 Billion People + 1 Earth = ?? It?s worth posting here given that this has been the central question shaping this blog since its inception. I explore many ideas, but focus particularly on the need to get comfortable with the wide range of human reactions to risks of various kinds. (Around minute 13, I credit the ?cultural cognition? work of Dan Kahan at Yale University.)
This means there won?t be a clean and neat path to progress, nor should there be. It also means, as Abhas Jha of the World Bank has put it in the context of disaster planning, we need to manage risk for ?graceful failure? ? soft landings amid uncertainty and imperfection. As I?ve put it, that?s the art of ?falling forward without falling down? (one definition of walking).
Here?s my talk, with one transcribed excerpt to serve as a teaser:
At around the sixteenth minute, I illustrate my notion of ?an inconvenient mind? by recalling the reactions of two leading environmentalists to the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plants. (The latest news there is that the World Health Organization this week found almost no evidence pointing to raised health risks among people exposed to radiation.)
On the same day, Bill McKibben and George Monbiot, leading environmentalists in the United States and Britain, wrote columns in the Guardian laying out completely divergent conclusions. Here?s a bit of what I said:
Monbiot, who?s very worried about global warming, said this accident proved nuclear power is robust?. McKibben wrote that this proves we have to turn off all our nuclear power plants and get small?.
There?s no Exxon involvement here. It just says that normal very well-educated people can come away from the same event with completely divergent messages. And I think we need to get comfortable with that. It makes this all seem a lot harder ? the challenge of decarbonizing a global energy economy as we head toward 9 billion people seeking better lives ? but I think it?s doable. And I actually still wake up most mornings optimistic, and I go to bed kind of bummed out. But I usually wake up the next morning optimistic again. Maybe it?s just pathology. That doesn?t mean I?m right. Don?t follow me necessarily.
If you have time to watch this weekend, pick out other sections that irk, excite or confuse you and I?ll respond.
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