This just came up in my Nonlinear feed and I haven’t yet listened to it in full, but one concern I have with organizations like XR is that they tend not to advocate specific climate policies, and when they do it’s often not the most effective ones. In particular, they don’t advocate carbon pricing, nuclear power, infill housing development, and carbon capture, and in some cases they oppose these policies.
People have finite attention spans when it comes to the environment; for example, this RCT found that nudging people toward clean electricity reduced their support for a carbon tax. XR may well be effective at moving public opinion around climate change, but I don’t think that’s the bottleneck for reducing emissions anymore as much as directing energy toward effective policies.
This just came up in my Nonlinear feed and I haven’t yet listened to it in full, but one concern I have with organizations like XR is that they tend not to advocate specific climate policies, and when they do it’s often not the most effective ones. In particular, they don’t advocate carbon pricing, nuclear power, infill housing development, and carbon capture, and in some cases they oppose these policies.
I’m active in Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which is a grassroots group advocating a carbon fee-and-dividend model, mostly in the US. Carbon pricing is probably the most important single policy for reducing emissions (relevant analysis regarding Build Back Better), and it polls well (around +35 net favorability), but it hasn’t had the groundswell of support that XR could bring.
People have finite attention spans when it comes to the environment; for example, this RCT found that nudging people toward clean electricity reduced their support for a carbon tax. XR may well be effective at moving public opinion around climate change, but I don’t think that’s the bottleneck for reducing emissions anymore as much as directing energy toward effective policies.