Quote

The only way major change in environmental policy is going to happen, the only way, is if there is a very strong, very active popular movement that demands it and such a movement would be unparalleled because it would be a popular movement that says, Raise our taxes so that we change our behavior.

Dale Jamieson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dale Jamieson
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: October 21
Academic
Jurist
University Teacher
Sioux City
Iowa
Says
Popular
Happen
Environmental
Strong
Major
Change
Active
Going
Taxes
Would
Behavior
Unparalleled
Policy
Demands
Movement
Raise

More quotes by Dale Jamieson

Image
Every country now has its own domestic political debate about how to respond to climate change. This is where the action is.
Dale Jamieson
Image
I played with English and Sociology in college but dropped out to work in the anti-war movement. I was going around denouncing the Viet Nam war as immoral but one day it dawned on me that I didn't know what that meant. I signed up for an ethics class at San Francisco State to find out the answer.
Dale Jamieson
Image
In trying to develop an impartial, expansive ethic we are trying to get ethical systems to do something which they did not evolve in order to do. This doesn't mean that it can't be done or that we shouldn't try to expand the reach of our ethical frameworks, only that there are reasons to be skeptical about its success.
Dale Jamieson
Image
We're highly adaptable and have developed some powerful systems of representation.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Climate change involves behaviors that are individually negligible, whose impacts go far beyond the spatial and temporal constraints that define our sense of community.
Dale Jamieson
Image
You can't imagine anything like nature as we know it without predators.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If you look globally you see a patchwork of jurisdictions (nations, states, provinces, cities) that have taken aggressive action on climate change, and a patchwork of jurisdictions that have not. These various policies reflect the politics of each jurisdiction and the values of its citizens.
Dale Jamieson
Image
I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.
Dale Jamieson
Image
We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it.
Dale Jamieson
Image
In the face of the collective action problems that are at the heart of the environmental crisis, consequentialists should seek to inculcate the green virtues which includes the virtue of cooperativeness. This would not bring about the best possible world but it would set us on the path of making it better.
Dale Jamieson
Image
If we don't have historical consciousness we can't really understand problems in all their dimensions, and if we can't understand problems than we can't find solutions.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Climate change is not going to be prevented. It's not even going to be mitigated to the degree a rational person would want. As a result we're going to have to live with climate change and try to reduce the extent and rate of change as much as possible. This is not an inspiring or sexy project.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Most process philosophy is historicist (e.g., Hegel) and not concerned with deep time. Maybe Whitehead is an exception. He may be a really important philosopher for all I know. I've never been able to read him.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Philosophers (and probably most intellectuals) are more interested in pursuing what they see as the logical implications of their theories than they are in paying attention to the shlumpy diversity of defensible values that people actually have, and then trying to figure out how these might be negotiated in the life of an agent or community.
Dale Jamieson
Image
Climate change involves fundamental choices about how we want to live and what kind of world we want.
Dale Jamieson
Image
The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
Dale Jamieson