{"id":64435,"date":"2022-12-12T07:13:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T12:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64435"},"modified":"2022-12-12T07:13:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T12:13:15","slug":"what-longtermism-gets-wrong-about-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64435","title":{"rendered":"What \u201clongtermism\u201d gets wrong about climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What \u201clongtermism\u201d gets wrong about climate change<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"\"\u00a0<\/picture>Corn affected by 2013 drought in Texas. Global warming is making summer droughts in Texas longer and more severe. USDA photo by Bob Nichols<\/span><\/p>\n

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In his new book\u00a0What We Owe the Future<\/em>, William MacAskill outlines the case for what he calls \u201clongtermism.\u201d That\u2019s not just another word for long-term thinking. It\u2019s an ideology and movement founded on some highly controversial ideas in ethics.<\/p>\n

Longtermism calls for policies that most people, including those who advocate for long-term thinking, would find implausible or even repugnant. For example, longtermists like MacAskill argue that the more \u201chappy people\u201d who exist in the universe, the better the universe will become. \u201cBigger is better,\u201d as MacAskill puts it in his book. Longtermism suggests we should not only\u00a0have more children right now<\/a>\u00a0to improve the world, but\u00a0ultimately colonize<\/a>\u00a0the accessible universe, even creating planet-size computers in space in which\u00a0astronomically large populations<\/a>\u00a0of digital people live in virtual-reality simulations.<\/p>\n

Backed by an enormous promotional budget of roughly $10 million that helped make\u00a0What We Owe the Future<\/em>\u00a0a bestseller, MacAskill\u2019s book aims to make the case for longtermism. Major media outlets like\u00a0The New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>Guardian<\/em>\u00a0have reported on the movement, and MacAskill recently appeared on\u00a0The Daily Show<\/em>\u00a0with Trevor Noah. Longtermism\u2019s ideology is gaining visibility among the general public and has already infiltrated the tech industry, governments, and universities. Tech billionaires like Elon Musk, who described longtermism as \u201ca close match for my own philosophy<\/a>,\u201d have touted the book, and\u00a0a recent article in the\u00a0UN Dispatch<\/em><\/a> noted that \u201cthe foreign policy community in general and the United Nations in particular are beginning to embrace longtermism.\u201d So it\u2019s important to understand what this ideology is, what its priorities are, and how it could be dangerous.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What \u201clongtermism\u201d gets wrong about climate change \u00a0Corn affected by 2013 drought in Texas. Global warming is making summer droughts in Texas longer and more severe. USDA photo by Bob Nichols In his new book\u00a0What We Owe the Future, William MacAskill outlines the case for what he calls \u201clongtermism.\u201d That\u2019s not just another word for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[18187,141,33479,7094,31857,33480],"class_list":["post-64435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists","tag-climate-change","tag-emile-p-torres","tag-ethics","tag-longtermism","tag-william-macaskill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64436,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64435\/revisions\/64436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}