The misallocation of climate research funding

We should take note of this fresh study for our proposals. Like @matthias has recently argued, “behavioural change alone, together with established technology, can lead to a 80-90% reduction in most categories of consumption”. In light of this, the underinvestment in social solutions to climate change is staggering.

Between 1990 and 2018, the natural and technical sciences received 770% more funding than the social sciences for research on issues related to climate change. Only 0.12% of all research funding was spent on the social science of climate mitigation.

2 Likes

Money quote from there:

The funding of climate research appears to be based on the assumption that if natural scientists work out the causes, impacts, and technological remedies of climate change, then politicians, officials, and citizens will spontaneously change their behavior to tackle the problem. The past decades have shown that this assumption does not hold.

Or in other words, the assumptions were a rational self and free will of people. These assumptions do not hold, sheeple!

We are left with the unsolved challenge of self-modification of the global society, or in other words, of complexity. Because a self-modifying system is a complex system. Feedback learning from rational insight would be such a nice version of complexity … but indeed, it’s not part of the system, at all …

2 Likes