Daron Acemoglu, Steve Koonin and Genevieve Guenther clash over potential problems of the language we use when talking about crises.
Is alarmist rhetoric harming climate action? Does the language of emergency cause more problems than it solves?
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From the cost of living crisis to the climate crisis, the crisis in healthcare to the crisis of migration, we live in a world of seemingly relentless crises. Politicians, commentators and social media typically demand urgent government responses. But there are dangers to the vocabulary of catastrophe. If everything is a crisis there is a risk we take none seriously, or take the wrong threats seriously. 38% of Americans avoid the news because of ‘crisis fatigue’. In addition continuous crisis risks paralysing decision making with demands for instant and immediate action. Moreover, critics argue a focus on crisis obscures aspects of culture that are performing well which require focus and attention to deliver their potential. Should we be sceptical of the language of crisis, and see it as a means to generate attention and a form of self-promotion and media hype? Or is it more fundamentally a product of a culture that is in relative decline and dissatisfied with itself? Or should we see the focus on threats and crises necessary to generate the action required to overcome the deep challenges we face?
#climatechange #politics #apocalypse
Daron Acemoglu is the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in economics, an Institute Professor at MIT, and is a regular writer on political economy and the state of liberal society. He was named the most cited economist in 2015 and he was awarded with Prospects 2024 thinker of the year. Genevieve Gunther is a climate activist and author of the book The Language of Climate Politics. She is a founding director of the organisation End Climate Silence. Steve Koonin is a theoretical physicist and the former director of the Centr for Urban Science and Progress at NYU. He served as President Obama’s Undersecretary of Science in the Department of Energy and has since researched the science behind political claims about climate change. Hosted by Sophie Scott Brown, a political philosopher at NYU.
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00:00 Introduction
00:23 Steve Koonin
02:35 Genevieve Guenther
05:41 Daron Acemoglu
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