How do You Solve a Problem Like Climate Change?

Naomi Klein says that capitalism cannot be the solution to the problem of climate change:

“If we really believed that climate change is an existential crisis, if we believed climate change is a weapon of mass destruction, as John Kerry said, why on Earth would you leave it to the vagaries of the market?”

Klein clarifies that she is not saying that “the market has no role”. While agreeing that there will be “solar and wind millionaires”, she says that a solution to climate change requires major changes that can only be achieved via “a strong role for the public sector, a strong role for regulations and, yes, incentives”.

Klein’s approach sounds like a (much) stronger version of the approach Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein described in their book, Nudge. Jeremy Waldron describes the book thus:

 “Some (choices) make themselves clamorously known; others have to be unearthed…There is no getting away from this: choices are always going to be structured in some manner, whether it’s deliberately designed or happens at random.”

And so we have (need?) nudging:

“Nudging is about the self-conscious design of choice architecture. Put a certain choice architecture together with a certain heuristic and you will get a certain outcome.”

For example, the book argues that if the organ donation option is checked by default in a driver’s license form, there will be far more donors than if the option was unchecked by default. Note that nobody is forced to be a donor (they can always uncheck the option); and this is exactly how a nudge works.

But the nudge approach, when used by governments, does raise concerns: who said governments are good at deciding a benevolent, desirable (and preferable) choice? Others say letting governments nudge us smacks of paternalism and condescension.

And when it comes to something as big as climate change, does the government really have an answer? Or is the political view called conservatism as described by Roger Scruton the correct view to have:

“Socialists, when they see a problem, they want a centralised answer to it. Whereas conservatives are more open to the thought that if a problem arises locally, it must be solved locally—to the extent that it can be solved at all. Also, conservatives are open to the thought that most [political] problems are not solvable.”

Which is the correct approach? It’s one of those tough questions; and nobody knows the answer for sure...