Optimism around the climate crisis could be our undoing
“Human beings have a natural optimism bias," says Cascade Institute Director Thomas Homer-Dixon. "For most of our species’ history, this bias has served us well, helping us persevere in the face of overwhelming odds. But when it comes to the climate crisis, our natural optimism could be our undoing.
“Our collective response to the crisis has been marked by denial, delay and delusion,” says Homer-Dixon. “Denial of the problem’s seriousness, delay in doing anything significant about it and delusion about the efficacy of those things we’ve finally gotten around to doing.”
In his recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Homer-Dixon references the work of renowned climate scientist (and former director of NASA Goddard Institute), James Hansen.
“In recent years, Dr. Hansen has argued that the scientific consensus, as reflected in the voluminous reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), greatly underestimates the rate and magnitude of future warming…
“…Lastly and most fundamentally, if James Hansen and his team are right, humanity’s responses to the climate crisis must be far more radical than currently planned. Incrementalism is now a waste of resources – and of time.”
Read the full opinion piece in the Cascade Institute.