Cascades and Climate Control
As the human race advances its technology day by day, we face the imminent reality of climate change and global warming whether we want to or not. While many of these advancements are beneficial to efficiency and overall quality of life, we still continue ignore many of the effects that certain technologies and practices can have on the environment. The key to reforming how we behave lies partially in information cascades, where if enough people adopt a practice, it will become more socially unacceptable to not engage in said practice. If more people and companies focus on finding alternatives and exploring how beneficial they are while using less and less fossil fuels, we won’t rely on oil as much to power our success.
The reason that businesses don’t change their operating practices immediately is due to both the cost of transitioning to clean energy and the lack of pressure from consumers to do so. By requesting action from companies to change, we can provoke information cascades to alter the social and economic norms in our society, allowing us to work towards a cleaner future where we have an environment that is thriving instead of dying. Due to the size of the change and the lack of imminent danger to our survival, the issue is often put on the backburner to focus on more alarming matters in the moment. Additionally, the environment is struggling under the tragedy of the commons, where if on person does something that may hurt the environment, they think it’ll just be a one time thing or that they won’t have any actual affect; however, it’s not the action itself that’s truly bad, but the habits that stem from it. By reversing the tragedy of the commons by making stricter laws about pollution and fossil fuel consumption, we may learn to coexist with the earth rather than dominating it.
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