Science wants to save us from ourselves
Many argue that what we’re suffering from is an ‘evolutionary mismatch’ in that our hunter-gatherer brains haven’t caught up with modern real-time problems such as climate change. What we are currently wired to respond to are immediate and easily perceived threats, like stampeding buffalo. According to acclaimed Stanford biologist Paul Erhlich — in his paper Human Natures, Nature Conservation and Environmental Ethics — our nervous systems have perceptual constraints making it difficult for us to comprehend the very real threat of a planet that is slowly heating up.
November 15, 2011