Regarding comment from Realclimate :"The biggest concern I have is that
economics is growth oriented, and the planet is finite."
Start by changing the semantics, because at heart, economic scientists
truly believe that money is just an objective representation of human
values. If you say that the science of human values is concerned with
the attainment of an overall increase in these values, you realise that
it matters little whether the planet is finite, and you can have "value
growth" even with a shrinking physical base. Human value scientists
know this, and that is why the Stern report correctly states that
gradual, but steadily more stringent tax and carbon trade measures can
be setup to have virtually no "human value nullification" in the long
run while considerably curtailing emmissions and resource usage.
On your other point re: long time scales, "religious" values seem to do
well in intergenerational timelines (societies with solid moral belief
systems do better in the really long term). I think this is why the
Alarmists' message is so effective at "converting" people to the cause.
" The end of the world is nigh" is standard religious fare, and
although I think fear is a blunt instrument for people to do things
that "actually" help, it certainly bumps up the average priority
several notches for the issue. It also explains why mildly dissenting
climate scientists get attacked by the orthodoxy (oops, I meant those
signatory to the consensus) :)
There is a reasonable number of studies that, for example, compare the
fortunes of religious societies vs secular ones, the predictable long
term effects of demographic changes (eg. baby boomers). The results of
those, however are still rarely used in conjunction with other long
term predictions (such as climate change)
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