I noticed Charles Mann’s comment that Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, “…fueled an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world.” I can’t help but comment on that other Mann, climate hero Michael Mann. In his book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, where he describes Paul Ehrlich as a “personal hero,” in reference to The Population Bomb he states, “Ehrlich’s early warning has ultimately proven prophetic.” The inertia of constructed ignorance, indeed.
Your focus on “stronger institutions” for providing policy expertise reminds me of a point made by Matt Ridley in The Evolution of Everything, that a lot of progress is the result of human action, but not of human design; academics have a top down bias that has a whiff of residual creationism.
My question arises from my sense that a lot of “expertise” propounded by academics is me-and-my-friendsism--- ‘if me and my friends were in charge this is how we would fix the problem.’ My question is, do you go even one step further upstream and ask what the practical or even possible boundaries of the policy domain are to begin with?
Enjoyed the talk!
I noticed Charles Mann’s comment that Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, “…fueled an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world.” I can’t help but comment on that other Mann, climate hero Michael Mann. In his book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, where he describes Paul Ehrlich as a “personal hero,” in reference to The Population Bomb he states, “Ehrlich’s early warning has ultimately proven prophetic.” The inertia of constructed ignorance, indeed.
Your focus on “stronger institutions” for providing policy expertise reminds me of a point made by Matt Ridley in The Evolution of Everything, that a lot of progress is the result of human action, but not of human design; academics have a top down bias that has a whiff of residual creationism.
My question arises from my sense that a lot of “expertise” propounded by academics is me-and-my-friendsism--- ‘if me and my friends were in charge this is how we would fix the problem.’ My question is, do you go even one step further upstream and ask what the practical or even possible boundaries of the policy domain are to begin with?