Public Please

The Yale Science-To-Action Collaborative published a list of Action Items to fight global climate change. I was very pleased to see media and education as top priorities for environmental action. Merv Williams was less pleased:

” An incredible collection of academic clap-trap. Not a single worthwhile suggestion that might achieve some positive action. ”

I think the suggestions were worthwhile, but I think Merv has a point to his concern.

We need to advance specific everyday actions to protect the environment. The Academy, for professional and epistemic reasons, has a problem with prescriptive specificity. Academics are traditionally wary of advocating specific policies for everyday life, such as “Don’t drive when you don’t have to,” “Buy an electric car,” or “Turn off your lights when you leave the house.” Advancing a long list of specific everyday actions may seem to violate intellectual freedom, a core value of the Academy. To maintain intellectual freedom within the Academy, there is a general preference for description over prescription, abstraction over concretion, complexity over simplicity, and skepticism over foundationalism. Academics, by their own brand of knowledge, are largely unprepared to prescribe action, including environmental action.

Where are the intellectual actors? Parents, educators, artists, preachers, lawyers, managers, legislators, and designers accept the premise that they should prescribe specific plans of action. And they accept the premise that they can enhance ideology without systematically sinking into ignorance. I agree with the view that we must explore the moral dimensions of environmental action, but ultimately we must inculcate a specific ethical code with respect to the environment. We must find a way to accustom people to a specific environmentally sustainable lifestyle. If academics want to save the environment, they must reevaluate their own professional and epistemic commitments. They must push further into the domain of everyday prescriptions, and they must make the case that by limiting human freedom, we maximize our freedom.