Below is a list of 11 public figures described as “prominent climate deniers working actively to mislead the public and delay policy action to address climate change”...
As our moral sense develops, we may find ourselves reflecting less and reacting more. In the beginning we struggle to sort it out. Eventually we become more settled in our judgments. What began as moral reasoning is increasingly replaced by moral intuitions. Some of us may become opinionated and easily outraged...
...to say that thoughts and feelings do not reflect reality or the truth is too broad. I’d rather say thoughts and feelings shouldn’t be considered the last word, or the whole story – they may have a basis in truth but dwelling on some truths can prevent us from seeing other truths.
Next to age and education/skill level, single parenthood is the biggest predictor of poverty and low wages. Single mothers do not have enough time and energy to increase their skill levels or work more than they do if they cannot afford childcare.
Insurers don't have much margin. Insurance premiums are pretty much in lock-step with healthcare costs. If the premiums employers pay for healthcare insurance went down, part of the savings would go to wage increases. If our health care costs could get in line with Western Europe's, that would mean a healthy pay raise for millions of American workers.
More likely someone will be called a denier if he/she doesn't seem all that concerned about climate change or thinks its effects will be minor and manageable.
I’m guessing significance refers to predicted effects of global warming and what actions must be taken to mitigate or adapt to those effects. Thus, if you think the impact will be harmless or even beneficial, that puts you in the denier camp. If you take a “wait-and-see” attitude to global warming, confident that “a technological fix is bound to come along when we really need it, you’re a denier. Ditto anyone who advocates incremental and/or purely market-based approaches to climate change, because these approaches are just too wimpy given the enormity of the threat.
“Denial’ is more interesting. In contemporary usage, it assumes that what is denied is the Truth, as in: Denial: “refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings”.
The trolley problem is a favorite of researchers studying moral decision-making. Many consider it a good test of individual differences in approaches to moral dilemmas, basically variations on Hot versus Cold decision-making: emotional versus cognitive, empathetic versus detached, aversion to directly causing personal harm versus impartial concern for the greater good.
My goal is not to provide answers. It's to stimulate thought. Thought reveals and lights the way. Thought conceals and distracts. Self-correction is more likely when we think with humility.
...if the brain and its tracking systems didn’t do a reasonable job of approximating reality, I wouldn’t be able to write this sentence because Homo sapiens wouldn’t even exist. An animal has to be tuned into the world in order to survive that world.
When we try to resist temptations, there's a tension between immediate, certain reward and later, uncertain reward. The more certain the later reward, the more likely temptations will be resisted. But certainty is just one part of the equation. Later rewards may feel far-off, abstract, and only intermittently compelling, while temptations are concrete and immediately satisfying.
Good News! Just last night, while I was singing the glories of these tiny housing units, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to move ahead and solicit bids to build them...
...you can’t get people to stay on the path without frequent reminders of the suffering and darkness that would befall them should they lose their way.
Residential hotels used to fill a niche: an alternative to homelessness for the down-and-out. If all else fails, you can get a room, with a shower down the hall. But building residential hotels is a low margin/high hassle business and they just aren't being built like they used to be.
Don’t get me wrong: there is a general scientific consensus that climate change is happening. But there’s no consensus on the rate or extent of global warming.
What matters is a sense of control and hope within a lifetime. The feeling that through my actions, I can make progress towards something that matters to me. Self-efficacy! Not that I’m the master of my destiny – more that there are things I can do that will make it better.
If you want to save water for dry years, it’s groundwater.
- Dr. Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences
Political coalitions are more or less ideological. On the less ideological side, they may be held together by alliances of convenience, whose common cause may be more dislike of the other side than broad agreement on a range of issues.
An ideology is an army of convictions about how the world is and how it ought to be. As befitting a military force, ideologies are fueled by a sense of threat - kept at bay through a fortress-like structure called the ideological square.