collective action

Planet Earth as Desert Island: “Lord of the Flies” or “Gilligan’s Island”?

Or in more technical terms, the Tragedy of the Commons? Or its inverse?

Lord of the Flies is a memorable novel about a group of English schoolboys who are marooned on a desert island.  They quickly descend into savagery and violence. The book can be seen as a parable of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s view that human life in a state of nature is short, nasty, and brutish. But …

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“But What Can Someone Like Me Do About Climate Change?”

Yes, there ARE things you can do. Individual efforts add up.

One reason people avoid thinking about climate change, or try to pretend it’s not happening, is that they feel powerless to address the problem.  It’s true that anything we can individually do is minuscule compared with the scope of the problem.  But individual efforts really do add up.  People usually think first about how to …

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