Imagine a system of thought that not only tells you that your truth is privileged, but that holds that your affluence has been justified by rationality. Imagine a world view in which elaborations of the extent of wealth inequality between percentiles of the national, let alone global, population can be dismissed as missing the point that greater wealth overall means that more people (perhaps including yourself and those intelligent enough to call themselves your readers) are living better, happier longer lives today than possible in the remote past. The plight of the most poor though real according to this world view is still an improvement over poverty that existed before the skyrocket of wealth among the wealthiest nations engendered by industrial innovations of the past 200 years. And never mind that inequality of incomes and outcomes might be exacerbated by the damages inflicted on the parts of the world where the poorest live in service of extracting the resources demanded by sustaining growth in the wealthiest parts of the world. It is a mistake according to this system of belief to measure the success of a society in terms of how far it falls from an "unattainable" ideal of equality; it should be measured instead against the extent to which its enlightened cleverness has increased its distance in aggregate from a dismal past.
This world view overlooks the fact that beyond your affluent neighborhood people are struggling, because you hardly need statistics to tell you that your storybook world is direct evidence that wealth has actually increased, and your own happiness is itself evidence that wealth contributes to an increase of happiness in the world. You insist that the $3 per day that the most miserable percentile along whom you inhabit the earth is hundreds of percentages more than the pennies their even more miserable forbears made do with (and more evidence in itself that life has become better globally since your world view took sway), although this may be what blinds you to the trifling problems of the poorest of your own country who are tens of times wealthier with access to goods and services such as smart phones and televisions, cars and refrigerators that the most miserable can't even dream of owning in the poorest parts of the world. Notions of injustice in this worldview are really a blindness to how fortunate we all are in the aggregate even if some of us are vastly more fortunate than others. But don't take your word for it, this is science we're talking about. This is the enlightenment and the wisdom of the market, inventions of a clever group of mostly men, mostly pale rich men, mere centuries ago.
How do you imagine someone with this world view might perceive global warming? You would be right if you imagined that this person would both acknowledge the healthy nature of the challenge as well as pooh pooh those who fret about it and urge drastic change rather than merely trust that more cleverness from the smart, enlightened class will address it as needs to address it arise.
Why take his word for it, though, even if it is backed up by rigorous statistical analysis of the data? Because he is a scientist. He has advanced degrees in cognitive psychology and linguistics.* He teaches at Harvard. He lives in Boston. He is a best selling author of good genetic stock.
What do you got?
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* On which topics, read him.
