POLA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Third Order, Industrialisation, Time Preference
Document Summary
Difficult to distinguish climate change from variability. The idea of climate change involves the stability/change paradigm. When presented with data points that are all over the place, easy to classify them as anomalous. If we drop the stability/change paradigm we might see those data points as displaying spatial and temporal variation rather than anomalies. What is minimally required for a change to be a problem is that it adversly affects what we cared about. But some people say that if climate change was happening due to natural causes then it would not be a problem. *example: dying prematurely of a disease is a probem, being mortal is not. Some people think nothing can be done about climate change. Garden of eden is the stable climate regime, untouched by humanity. The serpent is industrial civilization, which has given us the forbidden fruit of disposable consumer goods, which satisfy our immediate desires, and the greenhouse emissions that they entail.
