Archive for October, 2009
Migration to the new blog completed
2 years ago
by sandygautam
in personal
Migration from the old blogspot blog, to the new the-mouse-trap.com blog is now over. I’m posting this over at the new blog. Feeds have been properly migrated, so you should be reading this in your feed readers and would not need to subscribe anew to the new blog.
A lot of older stuff has been lost in migration (mostly the sidebar), do let me know via comments which sidebar facilities you use most often and which I should make efforts to restore?
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Welcome to the new Mouse trap
2 years ago
by sandygautam
in personal
Hello Readers,
Welcome to the all new The Mouse Trap. Please note the new domain name http://the-mouse-trap.com .
I will be juicing up the new mouse trap blog in a few days. Meanwhile please do update your blogrolls, links and RSS feeds. For existing subscribers to the old blogger blog, nothing should change and their RSS feed would be redirected and they do not need to unsubscribe and resubscribe.
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BAD09: the Psychology of trading carbon emissions and why it is misguided.
2 years ago
by sandygautam
in BAD09
It is blog action day and the topic is climate change. today I want to focus on why carbon emissions trading is not the right approach. This is a small post inspired by something I read/watched recently, but cant place the source right now.
The argument goes like this. There is a moral domain of deliberation and reasoning and then there is an economical. Both place different constraints on thinking and lead to different results. while the moral deliberation would be guided by feelings of guilt and responsibility; the economical would be guided by self-interest and ‘greatest good for greatest people’ utilitarian concerns. All hell breaks loose if we mix the two domains.
Climate change is a moral and not an economic problem facing us. It is psychologically hard (due to affective forecasting) to envision what would be best for our future selves, so how hard it is to envision and care for what might be apparent only after a few generations. If we purely go by the well-meaning economic approach of carbon emissions trading, we’ll perhaps ease the guilt/discomfort that individuals and nations feel today on wasteful and needless emissions. If rationalized from an economic perspective, the emission trading may actually backfire. It is akin to levying minor fines on littering; rich people then become prone to littering thinking they can get away easily by paying the fines: instead of a punishment , the small fine becomes a convenience fees to be paid for not bothering to look up proper waste disposal mechanism.
All of the above is based on solid psychological studies and concepts and hopefully would enlighten those who are hell bent on thinking that carbon emission trading is a step in the right direction.
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