Re: SC37

Three, four, perhaps even more, swords, horsemen, or general doom senarios awaiting us. Perhaps it will show itself in the end, that our fatal flaw, lies within, in the form of " Temporal Discounting " as a complex mechanism, which evolved inside our Grey Flesh, through the many thousands of generations that created the form we take today. This " Discounting ", once a benificial stragey for survival, is now disfunctional, and compells us to ignore the warnings, the alarm bells about our future. It is discussed in some detail at The OIL Drum " website, in this article:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2243

The debate on the realities of both climate change and Peak Oil has moved from 'are they real?' to questions concerning timing, magnitude and impact. At the same time, expanding research in 'temporal discounting' in economics (called 'impulsivity' in psychology), is shedding light on how steeply we value the present over the future, a trait that has ancient origins. Knowing this tendency, how can we expect factual updates on peak oil and climate change to behaviorally compete with Starbucks, sex, slot machines, and ski trips?

Science is rapidly increasing our knowledge about the planet. To affect change however, we must become equally knowledgeable about ourselves. The time has come to integrate ecological science with insight about human behavior derived from new findings in anthropology, hunter gatherer studies, evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences. Below the fold is an overview on human discount rates, their evolutionary origins, and their relevance to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change and peak oil ( much more in the article )..........

Are we essentially hardwired mentally to discount ( ignore ) the importance of warnings about our future, no matter how dire the alarm bells are ringing, because the evolution that brought us to where we are, dictates behaviours which find us seeking the benificial amenities of our present circumstance, while not considering with due merit negative developments for our future well being. Its like in that new Global Warming commercial, where a train is coming down a track towards a man, the train represents the " negative repercussions " of global warming, the mans comments that he won't have to endure any negative effects in his lifetime, and won't have to deal with the travails of this calamity to come, he steps off the track, out of " life ", out of " harms way ", but a young girl behind him is standing in the track, in front of the train, just seconds from being hit, by just the ill effects this man showed no concern about. This is Temporal Discounting. It is fundamentally a part of our nature, and may very well cause us as a species, to react to slowly, to the rapid developments that are threatening our existance.