Forgive the bean-counting, but even if everyone gave up their jewelry, it would not make a scratch in the world's emission of greenhouse gases, which are dominated by heavy industry (29 percent), buildings (18 per. cent), transport (15 percent), land-use change (15 percent), and the energy needed to supply energy (13 percent). (Livestock is responsible for 5-5 per-cent, mostly methane rather than CO, and aviation for 1.5 percent.) Of course my correspondent suggested forgoing jewelry and pottery not be cause of the effect but because of the sacrifice, and it's no surprise that she singled out jewelry, the quintessential luxury. I bring up her ingenuous suggestion to illustrate two psychological impediments we face in dealing with climate change.
The first is cognitive. People have trouble thinking in scale: they don't differentiate among actions that would reduce CO, emissions by thousands of tons, millions of tons, and billions of tons. 57 Nor do they distinguish among level, rate, acceleration, and higher-order derivatives between actions that would affect the rate of increase in CO, emissions, affect the rate of CO, emissions, affect the level of CO, in the atmosphere, and affect global temperatures (which will rise even if the level of CO, remains constant). Only the last of these matters, but if one doesn't think in scale and in orders of change, one can be satisfied with policies that accomplish nothing.
The other impediment is moralistic. As I mentioned in chapter 2, the human moral sense is not particularly moral; it encourages dehumaniza-tion ("politicians are pigs") and punitive aggression ("make the polluters pay"). Also, by conflating profligacy with evil and asceticism with virtue, the moral sense can sanctify pointless displays of sacrifice. In many