SuperFreakonomics

The authors of SuperFreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, make what is, at face, a straightforward economic claim: Faced with a serious problem (global warming) and given the option of two sorts of solutions, one (geoengineering) which costs an order of magnitude less then the other (carbon emission reduction), why spend more?

Some argue that there are not really two sorts of solutions, that geoengineering is unlikely to practically work. With admitted ignorance of the technology, I think -- at this point -- its fair to observe that changing the behavior of billions of people, and against many of their narrow, short-term, interests is not entirely practical itself.

The scientist most relied on by L&D, Ken Caldeira, doesn't share their conclusion, in part, for a different reason: he apparently believes carbon emission is "essentially immoral" just like "mugging little old ladies". L&D view this moralistic, as opposed to analytical, approach to be, in some form, religious.

While L&D do take perverse joy in challenging traditional moral assumptions -- eg: pimps up -- their analysis is not simply amoral. Their claim is ultimately Machiavellian: better, more moral, outcomes, can be realized through cold-hearted, amoral, analysis than by adherence to pious orthodoxies.

The traditional, religious, understanding, shunned by all sides in this debate, is that people generally act moral less out of analytical, or empathetic, judgments of right and wrong, than out of force of habit guided by the weight of culture and tradition. Where this weight is removed, people have a frightening tendency to, for example, murder little old ladies and mug defenseless children.

It is hard, then, to imagine that the behavior of billions of people will be peacefully changed to meaningfully reduce their carbon footprint without harnessing the weight of culture and tradition to attach a notion of something like sin to carbon emission.