Member-only story
Saners tell it straight — we know the meaning of the word “emergency.”
I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing the ultimate excuse for NOT taking strong immediate climate action: economics.
I hold a B.A. in economics and was dubious about the field from the start. When I took my first macroeconomics class, I was appalled. Economists were modelling the economy with assumptions to simplify things. THAT made sense. You want a model that simple enough to use, one that takes major forces into account, but doesn’t (need to) account for everything.
But the actual assumptions they used? The utility curve? Perfect knowledge? Perfect competition? Even at 20 I knew this was outlandish. I was an introvert but I could not sit still. I stood up and told the professor my concerns. He acknowledged them (sort of) and then went on with his lecture. I can’t blame him — he was just doing his job. But I blamed economists for doing such shoddy work.
Many decades later, economics is still ridiculous. Dangerously so.
Money Is A Problem — Selectively
There is a crazy but carefully constructed and self-serving narrative about money. We don’t even talk about it when the authorities WANT something and we insist that we can’t…
