"Swine Flu" vs. Global Warming

Just a little workout for your brain tonight. Imagine if all the media headlines about the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico (the US and a few other countries, including NZ) replaced the words "swine flu" with "global warming". Would the world react similarly?

Of course not. But why?

Even though it seems likely at this stage that swine flu may have been especially virulent in a few Mexican cases, the majority of "confirmed" cases seem to have been diagnosed after the patient has already fully recovered. Swine flu, in its human form, appears to be nothing much different from existing human influenza. The students infected in New Zealand thought they had just been suffering the effects of Montezuma's Revenge - not the latest global health scare.

Surely global warming must be slightly more alarming, given years of research findings released two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

The main point is that this is a good example of one type of systematic irrationality that is preventing coordinated action against threats that are not immediate. Namely, most of us can identify with a killer disease, as it would affect us direclty (rather fast). Global warming, however, requires second-order thinking, namely because it does not affect us immediately like a killer disease would. Instead, one would have to imagine the personal impact of, for example, sea levels in Bangladesh rising, which means millions of refugees, who then may flood into your country. Or the disruption of agriculture, which would mean higher food prices.

So even though a swine flu-type response would do a lot to mitigate global warming (or focus on appropriate adaptation measures), don't expect to see this type of coordinated action until those Bangladeshi refugees show up at the border.

What this is all about

The key challenge facing human society, if it values a future in the year 2400 and beyond that does not resemble the dystopia of George Orwell (1984) or Aldous Huxley (Ape and Essence), is a social one. Society is too distracted with technological optimism (the belief that science and technology will enable unlimited growth in human wealth), putting self- or group-interest ahead of public-interest (rather than alongside it) and "solving" short-term "problems" to take note of the limits to the system in which we live.

While this may sound like a re-hash of Limits to Growth, a 1972 thesis by a group calling themselves the "Club of Rome" which warned society not to breach unknown ecological system limits in pursuit of [what would ultimately be short-term] wealth, I'm interested in a wider scope of system limits. No doubt that ecological system limits are both (a) being breached and (b) not well measured/known, but there are also numerous limits that society values as a collective. These are things like equity, fairness (justice), freedom, safety, human rights, and a diversity of cultural expressions (such as traditions and beliefs).

I hope to comment on occasions where pursuit of what we do not wish to limit: wealth, prosperity, development, for example, threatens to cross key limits. Or occasions where we see massive trade-offs between limits in order to raise a limit: for example, forgoing a tradition in the pursuit of fairness. 

Pursuing wealth, prosperity or development is not bad, but more and more, I see these pursuits as systems whereby designers (businessmen, policymakers, communities) seek to toe the limiting line. Any margin of safety would be "economically inefficient". Let's just hope that the designers know the limits.