tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-949421001644904537.post860364869818606654..comments2024-01-24T18:56:58.635-08:00Comments on EXPLORING CULTURES: A Global Blog (all languages): Nat Rich blames our "Losing Earth" on "human nature." Is he right?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-949421001644904537.post-45885558504884830872018-07-29T21:58:44.169-07:002018-07-29T21:58:44.169-07:00Hunter Cutting: P.P.S./July 29–while we are still ...Hunter Cutting: P.P.S./July 29–while we are still days away from the release of Rich’s story, he appeared on PBS News Hour tonight to discuss his story. And indeed it does seem that this BU symposium presentation was a preview of his thesis, but the picture is still not fully resolved.<br /><br />You can watch the interview here at the 18'35" mark.<br /><br />Here are a couple key excerpts from the PBS transcript:<br /><br />Hari Sreenivasan: so why did we fail? what was it that created that paralysis that we are so familiar with today?<br /><br />Nathaniel Rich: well, there is a sort of a simple political answer, very narrow answer, i suppose, you could make which is that in the bush administration, the first george bush administration, his chief of staff former governor of new hampshire john sununu who was an engineer, ph.d., was very skeptical about the science of global warming, and he suspected that it was being used by kind of a cabal of folks who wanted to suppress growth and economic advancement and all of that, and he managed to win an internal fight within that white house against action. that is kind of the most limited possible answer, and the piece tells the story of that political conversation. i think the larger — the larger answer has to do with how we as a species to reckon with vast technological problems that will only affect folks decades or generations from now, of course that is not the case anymore, but in the early eighties that was how the conversation was being constructed. and so i think there is a kind of larger conversation to be had about why we were so unable to tackle this when we had a great opportunity to do so and then there is the more narrow conversation about the inside politics of the matter.<br /><br />From that exchange it’s hard to know whether Rich is diagnosing the failure to take action back in the 1980s or the failure to take action over the three decades since then.<br /><br />However, in a following exchange later in the PBS interview, Rich appears to double down on this BU presentation, blaming human nature.<br /><br />Sreenivasan: one of the meetings you describe in great detail starts to get to the same changes we, challenges we have, you see people trying to water down language, not wanting to make a decision today, leave the decision for others.<br /><br />Rich: there is still a basic discomfort with trying to propose a drastic transformation or immediate transformation of the — of our whole energy economy which is to say our economy, so even folks who agree on every aspect of the issue, the science and the politics still we are not able to a negotiate even the most basic statement of purpose and i think that we still see that problem today, frankly.<br /><br />The proposition that even today “folks who agree on every aspect of the issue, the science and the politics still …are not able to a negotiate even the most basic statement of purpose,” is completely ridiculous. While that may have been true back in the 1980s, that hasn’t been true for a very long time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com