More Behavioral Economics from the NY Times: The Case of Volcano Risk and Implications for Climate Change Awareness

The writers for the NY Times are a consistent bunch.  In the Book Review section today, there is a short discussion by Kim Tingley reviewing a new book called Eruption by Steve Olson.   See if you can spot the “behavioral economics” mindset that we are fools who are ignorant of the risks we have imposed on ourselves.  The book author and the reviewer are concerned that  ”we don’t know that we don’t know” what climate change will do to us in the future.   The author and the reviewer are somehow smarter than everyone else and sit on Mount Olympus and ponder the fate of the common man (think of Homer Simpson).  

If you don’t believe me, then read Tingley’s piece;

Kim Tingley is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

91% of America?  Olson may not have read my Death Toll from Natural Disasters paper.  Economic growth protects us from such disasters.  This website suggests that 40,000 people have died in the U.S from natural disasters over the 116 year period 1900 to 2016.    This is a tiny total in a nation with 330 million people.  Contrast this risk with driving risk.

On an annual basis, roughly 40,000 people die each year in car crashes.   The good news is that this death rate is falling but this highlights that risk exposure is not as high as what the “doom and gloomers” claim it to be.