How Societies Choose

Global warming is very likely caused by humans (announced last week by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change/IPCC).

The key question then arose, "what do we do now?" Report co-chair Susan Solomon's reply:

"It is my personal scientific approach to say that it
is not my role to communicate what should be done,
I believe that is a societal choice."

My first question for you, reader of this nascent blog, is an easy one: "did society choose to cause global warming?" ... Of course not, it is a side effect of other choices.

My second question may not be as simple: "what were the choices made by society that DID cause global warming?" ... Please share any and all thoughts on this!

My third question is the following: "would it be possible and sufficient for society merely to choose to reverse those decisions it made that caused global warming to reverse the advance of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the resulting warming?"

I wonder what would happen if the California state legislature voted into law a new bill dictating everyone in California must become height-weight proportionate within 3 years, else be fined, pay more taxes, or go to prison; what would happen?

I imagine there would be a debate in which some might say: "If we penalize gross consumption and sloth, people will just move to other states where it is permitted without legal penalty, let people choose themselves how they will live. Big people are not hurting anyone but themself."

Yet I can see others saying, "No, obesity is dangerous, we must regulate it, because it is a bad influence on my children to see those obscenely large people. My children may believe it is fine to become obese, and then our whole society will become insensitive to obesity, and then our whole society could fall prey to other, more active and competitive societies."

Wouldn't both groups have a point? Isn't obesity one of those unintended consequence that DOES depend on social choice, just like human-caused CO2 in the atmosphere? And aren't the societal propensities behind obesity and CO2 in the atmosphere pretty similar -- comfort and ease in life in the short-term?

Some would point out that while some people are obese due to their choices, that others are obese because of genetics -- they really had no choice in the matter. But many of those genetically predisposed to obesity will elect to be active and eat healthy food -- i.e., their genetic predisposition doesn't usually eclipse their ability to choose to do the right thing.

Is it possible that humans are genetically driven to create increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere -- i.e., is the human gene for survival so short-sighted that it predisposes humans to consuming ever greater amounts of fossil fuel, so that CO2 in the atmosphere inherently rises so long as humans exist?

No analogy is perfect, but what I like about the analogy of global warming to obesity is that it presents the problem as one of difficult personal and societal choices, involving rather complex societal feedback mechanisms where individual and societal motivators are not always so well aligned -- and the choice to diet and exercise would probably help reduce both obesity AND global warming.

So I'll add one more question: "for you successful dieters out there, what's your trick?"

Was it your passion to be sexy and be viewed as sexy by others that led you to the gym and to the vegetable and fruit aisle in the grocery store -- i.e. peer pressure? Was it because you live in an agricultural society where your physical body is moving daily to work for the nutrition you need to live the next day? Was it because of Richard Simmons' capitalist-profit driven marketing skills helping you to have fun in making effort?

Have you ever noticed how the ripening fruit on the tree grows ever heavier until it drops to the ground to yield itself fully to nutrient for the community?

Has anyone out there reviewed the correlation between energy-consumption per person and obesity? I think we already know the answer to that, although I am still interested in how closely the two correlate.

Does this comparison of personal and societal choices behind global warming and personal and societal choices behind obesity seem a little personal? Can that be a bad thing? Where should we expect the leadership to come for better societal choices? How do societies choose? What type of theories of economics, body economics, CO2 economics, societal economics pertain?

In spite of the relationship to genetics, obesity seems like economics of privilege. I've seen very few obese homeless people.

“The world will benefit when economy supports well-being.” – Robert Rubinstein

“The capital markets can create social change much more quickly than legislation or litigation because that profit incentive is in place.” – Social entrepreneur Thomas Van Dyck, Chairman of As You Sow, Founder of Progressive Asset Management and also of the Social Equity Investment Group of US Bancorp Piper Jaffrey

Is it possible that mainstream capitalism-induced growth in consumption could be inflected to capitalism-induced growth in conservation?

“Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . that may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.” “A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” – Warning to Humanity document (1992), signed by over 1,600 of the world's senior scientists, including a majority of the living Nobel laureates in the sciences.

But did these Nobel laureates and other leading scientists have a good formula for any of their friend's attempting weight loss?

I'll be honest about what I suspect my own personal motivators are for vying to keep out of the obese class:
- obesity does not fit my personal self-image (I was a skinny kid growing up and for many years as an adult)
- I'd like to share joyful times with my children and others for many years to come, and I am wary of health-risks of obesity
- I feel sexier and more capable when active and healthy
- when I see people who are leaner and more fit than I am, I think, "I bet they are younger, more active, eat better, etc. -- maybe I can improve in some of those areas," and when I see people who are more obese than I am, I think, "well, they are older, less active, eat too much, etc. -- maybe I can avoid some of those things and keep myself more fit"

Maybe reasoning on the underlying metaphors is helpful:
- self-awareness, self-image
- desire for longevity, sustainability and joy
- feeling good about ourselves, truthfully
- society's standards

At the beach in Hua Hin one time, my Thai friend commented at the obese Europeans, giggling -- that Thai's thought it was amazing and funny how Europeans could be so enormously whale-like in size. Society's standard in Thailand was/is different than in other places for obesity.

Perhaps the most profitable new global-warming related commercial ventures will continue to address society's propensity to consumption and sloth. Perhaps the most efficacious new global-warming reversing activities will advance self-awareness of choice in self-image, better understanding of the connection to longevity, sustainability and joy (thanks IPCC for reinforcing awareness of that connection), feeling good about ourselves truthfully, and choices for greater conservation in society.

Perhaps it is possible
to do both at once,
aligning with
both

power

AND

conservation / trusteeship.